Oklahoma escapes this one; another eliminator ahead in Bedlam showdown

NORMAN, Okla. — Sometimes, the correct play is just to gamble and see what happens. You’re Gary Patterson, trying to complete a wild comeback on the road, you don’t kick the extra point to go to overtime.

“Go for two for the win,” the TCU coach said.

You’re Steven Parker, the Oklahoma defensive back responsible for covering TCU receiver Shaun Nixon on that two-point try with 51 seconds left, you don’t stick with him. Not with the quarterback suddenly outside the pocket, heading for the end zone.

“I knew if I stayed on the guy, the quarterback was gonna run it in (for the score) with ease,” Parker said. “I just timed my jump right.”

Parker batted down Bram Kohlhausen’s pass, swatting away the No. 18 Horned Frogs’ hopes — and propping up the Sooners’ (No. 7 in the College Football Playoff rankings) uneasy dreams.

And don’t misunderstand. In late November, everywhere in college football, that’s what this is about. When Oklahoma’s 30-29 victory was complete, the operative emotion was more exhale than exhilaration. There was nothing much impressive about the victory — unless, that is, you value victory.

At this point, that’s the only thing that’s really important. We like to think the College Football Playoff race is a beauty pageant, all cosmetic appeal and style points and — BOOM! Did you see that dominance? — and it is, right up until the time a quarterback goes down, an offense stalls, a game turns.

Ask Ohio State, which saw a season’s worth of warning lights suddenly become a complete meltdown in a loss to Michigan State, which was playing with not one but two backup quarterbacks.

Check in with Oklahoma State, where an unbeaten record got shattered and Playoff hopes were punctured by a Baylor team down to its third-team quarterback (who of course can still throw the football very, very well; Art Briles just plugs ‘em in and plays on). On the winning end, pay attention to Notre Dame, which survived Boston College despite committing five turnovers.

Or see Oklahoma, where a catalyst quarterback gets hit, and has a headache, and they take his helmet away. A comfortable lead slowly — and then suddenly — evaporates.

And the whole thing becomes a demolition derby.

“We were just hanging on for dear life,” Oklahoma defensive coordinator Mike Stoops said.

It’s hard to know how the selection committee will view Oklahoma’s victory — or anybody’s really. Their prism on this season has at times seemed distorted. The Sooners have been one of the hottest teams over the second half of the season, ever since that loss to Texas (no one’s going to forget that). But playing a TCU team without star quarterback Trevone Boykin, they simply escaped.

What does it mean?

“If you look around the country every week, for everyone, is it ever perfect?” Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said. “It’s tough. … rarely is it perfect. We’ve had a lot of excellent games, and we’re due for one that isn’t. You can win when you’re still not at your best.”

That’s a critically important quality. Ask, say, the Buckeyes. And maybe the selection committee will also recognize that Oklahoma held firm control at halftime when Baker Mayfield, its own star quarterback, left with a concussion. And that the Sooners weren’t the same after that. And that the game — college football, everybody — morphed from uneasy to uh-oh on a couple of big plays. And that Oklahoma won.

“It’s a lot of ugly games,” said Sooners offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley, who earlier Saturday had watched Michigan State beat Ohio State in a sodden slugfest. “That’s what the end of the year is about. Give our team credit. We found a way to win it.”

While we’re at it, give TCU for trying to win it without going to overtime. The Horned Frogs trailed 30-13 going into the fourth quarter, but had climbed almost all the way back when Kohlhausen’s 14-yard touchdown pass to Emanuel Porter pulled them within one point with less than a minute left. Patterson’s decision to go for two at the end was debatable — it certainly appeared TCU had Oklahoma on the ropes, and would have taken momentum into overtime — but understandable.

“We didn’t come here to hang around,” the coach said. “We came here to win.”

But the decision was only necessary because Patterson went for two early in the third quarter, when a touchdown pulled TCU within 23-13.

Apparently thinking the Horned Frogs might not get many more opportunities — Oklahoma’s defense to that point had been dominant — Patterson decided to try to cut the deficit to eight, a one-score game.

If he hadn’t chased those points that early, if he’d kicked instead, TCU could have won 31-30 with an extra point at the end.

Regardless, instead of playing for overtime TCU went for two — and in gambling, brought both teams’ seasons to the critical edge.

On one play, it was win or go home, more than one Oklahoma player said afterward. In TCU’s case it was almost win and go home, to face Baylor with the Big 12 title on the line, and at least faint Playoff hopes, too.

Instead, it’s Oklahoma moving on to its annual Bedlam date with rival Oklahoma State. If the showdown is not quite as big as it might have been — the Cowboys’ home loss Saturday to Baylor was only their first, but it was severely damaging to their Playoff hopes — it’s still an eliminator, for both teams.

And for Oklahoma, it might be a launching pad.Much will depend on Mayfield’s health. That much was made clear Saturday. Except for one 72-yard run by workhorse running back Samaje Perine — who was also banged up, he scored that touchdown on a tightly wrapped left ankle — the Sooners’ offense was nonexistent in the second half Saturday without Mayfield.

He was hit hard in the second quarter — TCU linebacker Ty Summers was ejected for targeting — and although he initially passed the concussion protocols administered by Oklahoma’s medical staff, when they inquired again at halftime, he admitted to having a headache and they pulled him out.

Without him, Oklahoma just hung on. In the fourth quarter, the big lead melted away. But thanks to Parker in the very end, the season did not melt down. When the sophomore defensive back saw Kohlhausen scrambling his way, he suddenly faced a crucial choice.

“You’re not a robot out there,” Oklahoma defensive end Eric Striker said. “You’re out there making plays. Sometimes you’ve just got to take those chances and do those types of things.”

Leaving Nixon wide open in the end zone, Parker charged the quarterback. He leaped high — it looked, Bob Stoops said, “like he could have dunked it on a 12-foot rim.” With his right hand, Parker slapped an upset away, sending Oklahoma on to what might just be, as Mike Stoops put it, “a one-game playoff” against Oklahoma State.

“Hopefully, you feel like it’s our fate, our destiny,” he said. “We’ll see.”

On Tuesday, the selection committee will unveil its latest rankings. We’ll all discuss and debate them, parsing chairman Jeff Long’s phrases to glean hidden meaning and arguing who should be in and out. And then everyone will hit refresh and do it again next week.

But Oklahoma remains very much in the Playoff picture because at the season’s most critical point so far, the Sooners gambled — and then timed the leap just right.

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