Oklahoma football: No more time for going 'through the motions'

But David King remembers Kansas. The hapless Jayhawks had 246 first-half yards and 17 first-half points. The Sooners eventually won 47-17, but it foreshadowed what was to come.

“Last year, we got complacent,” said King, now a senior defensive tackle. “I told this to the guys. We started off 5-0, 6-0, we stomped Texas. Went to Kansas the next week, and we just went through the motions the first half.”

Time for no more motions with the OU defense, starting Saturday night in this Mountain time zone outpost, where Texas-El Paso awaits in Sun Bowl Stadium with no great offense but more fangs than the Sooners encountered at Kansas last October.

If the Sooners are to justify their No. 4 national ranking and status as Big 12 favorite, they've got to play better defense.

“The last two or three years, we haven't really been playing Oklahoma defense,” King said. “We're tired of hearing, ‘defense is the weak link, blah, blah, blah.' We want to come out and make a statement that we can ball like the Alabama defense, the LSU defense.”

Here's what's nutty. OU led the Big 12 in scoring defense, 22.1 points a game. In total defense, the Sooners were second in the Big 12, 376.2 yards per game. OU played some solid defense at times. Florida State scored just 13 points against OU; Kansas State scored just 17.