Oklahoma football: Mike Stoops owns up

Mike Stoops admitted on Thursday that OU football had a coaching problem last season. And he was part of it.

“Last year, we take full responsibility as a staff,” Stoops said. “Certainly not an indication of a coach’s ability or inability.”

The Sooners played solid defense through the first eight games of the season. Then OU beat Baylor 42-34, West Virginia 50-49 and OSU 51-48 in overtime. Finally, Texas A&M routed the Sooners 41-13 in the Cotton Bowl.

Mike Stoops talks with the press before the start of Spring Football at the University of Oklahoma (OU) on Thursday, March 7, 2013 in Norman, Okla. Photo by Steve Sisney, The Oklahoman

The yardage figures from those games were ugly: an acceptable 424 by Baylor, an historic 778 by West Virginia, an acceptable 490 by OSU and 633 by A&M.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Stoops said. “At times last year we played well. But down the stretch, when we got against some good offense, didn’t play nearly as well as we need to here at Oklahoma.”

For the Friday Oklahoman, our man Jason Kersey wrote about the OU defense going into the spring. You can read that here. I wrote about Bob Stoops’ coaching changes, which you can read here.