Oklahoma is working to get back to forcing turnovers against Maine

NORMAN. Oklahoma’s defense hopes to reverse the trend on Saturday.

The Sooners failed to score two weeks ago against South Carolina, and the only score of the game against Ole Miss came when receiver JJ Hester moved the football to erase OU’s own fumble.

With FCS The Maine Black Bears (4-4, 2-3 CAA) are coming to townOklahoma (4-4, 1-4 SEC) needs to help its offense to regain some swagger on the defensive side of the football before the Sooners’ final three conference games in November.

“We need to force turnovers,” OU coach Brent Venables said on Tuesday. “…That’s the formula for success and how you win, you force turnovers, you complement, you know, each other and give the offense a short field.”

Maine will give the Sooners an opportunity to take the ball away come on Saturday at 11 am.

The Black Bears have played 12 times this year, five of which have been against opponents and defensemen Carter Peavy picked four times in 2024.

Despite the dry spell the past two weeks, OU is still ranked 19th in the nation in forcing 15 turnovers. Nine of those sacks were fumble recoveries, while Oklahoma’s secondary beat opposing defenders six times.

And while the defense can’t play outside the structure of each specific play to generate big plays, the linebacker can Kip Lewis said the defense must be ready to make the Black Bears pay for mistakes.

“We have to be more in tune with the details,” Lewis said Monday. “Opportunities arise, we must seize them, not lose them and be able to use them.”

In the midst of OU’s offensive struggles, the defense put a ton of pressure on their own shoulders to pass the ball for a short field or a straight score.

Lewis’ pick-six turned things around against Auburn, and while you can’t count on plays like this every week, the Sooners believe they can be more aggressive in practice to put themselves in better positions to force a turnover on Saturday.

“We just talked about it weeks before because we knew we had to (force) some turnovers,” defensive end R. Mason Thomas said “… We were on fire at the beginning (of the year) and then we weren’t, we were losing turnovers the last couple of weeks, so we put a lot of emphasis on decorating the stone, turning the ball back on our offense.”

Ole Miss quarterback Jackson Dart did a great job taking care of the football last week, but the Sooners were able to limit Lane Kiffin powerful attack.

If OU can reproduce the same intensity it played with in the first half against the Rebels, the defense believes it can get back on track before rolling at Missouri.

“We played really well in the first half,” Lewis said. “It’s to stay strong and make sure we have competitive stamina throughout the game and just continue to compete throughout the game and make sure we improve our pieces.”