John E. Hoover
- Oklahoma Sooner
NORMAN — Does Oklahoma have a running back controversy?
Of course not. It’s one game into the season. Friday’s opponent, Temple, wasn’t very good. The Sooners face a daunting SEC schedule. Over the next three months, DeMarco Murray is going to need every one of them at different times this year.
But no one can deny that OU freshman Taylor Tatum looked pretty special in his college debut against the Owls.
“Yeah, you can see his explosiveness, and he’s got great power,” coach Brent Venables said Friday night.
Murray, Venables’ running backs coach and himself a Sooner gridiron legend, was serving a one-game NCAA suspension for Level II recruiting violations. He wasn’t on the sidelines Friday. But if he was, would he have gotten Tatum a little more work?
Tatum, a freshman from Longview, TX, went into the opener listed fourth on the depth chart. He finished with just four carries. But he led the team with 66 yards rushing as the Sooners rolled to an easy 51-3 win.
“Oh, it felt great,” Tatum said. “And there’s no other place I’d rather do it. Just all the people, the crowd was definitely into it tonight. The stadium felt even bigger when you’re (in) it – better than when you’re a recruit on the sideline looking in. So … you just have a burst of adrenaline. I haven’t been hit since last year, like November. So just getting hit again, getting live-action speed again was definitely a great feeling.”
Tatum sliced off a 4-yard run on his first carry in the first quarter, a sudden, one-cut burst up the middle in which he made a defender miss at the line of scrimmage.
His second carry came midway through the fourth quarter, when he got the offense off the goal line with a 19-yard scamper.
“Just be a running back,” Tatum said. “Find the hole, get vertical, make a couple moves and just make as many yards as you can.”
Two plays later, he caught a short pass from Michael Hawkins and gained 3 yards.
On the next play, he took a handoff up the middle, accelerated outside to the right and sprinted upfield for a 35-yard gain, the Sooners’ longest run of the night.
“I’m sure I just saw the hole,” Tatum said. “It was probably designed inside run. Linebacker fit the hole he was supposed to fit. I just – we both did our jobs. Found a hole, made a play. That’s probably what happened.”
Then he finished off that drive by taking a third-down option pitch from Hawkins, cutting upfield and scooting inside the pylon for OU’s only third-down conversion and final touchdown.
“I feel like on the whole we did pretty good,” Tatum said. “You score that many points, you’re doing something good. But obviously there’s always something to get better. Receivers blocked their butts off, o-line blocked their butts off. We still had some missed assignments. Everybody had something they could improve on tonight. Obviously we’re gonna enjoy the win, we’re gonna look forward and watch the film, but there’s always something to get better. So we’ll probably enjoy the win tonight, watch the film and get better for next week.”
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