Ad Disclosure
What Oklahoma’s players said ahead of playing Georgia in the Rose Bowl
By SDS Staff
Published:
The Rose Bowl matchup featuring Georgia and Oklahoma should be very entertaining.
The Sooners’ explosive offensive against Georgia’s fast and physical defense is obviously the matchup everyone is watching, but the catalyst could be OU’s defense stopping Georgia’s running game.
Several Oklahoma players and coaches met with the media Thursday, and here’s what they said about playing Georgia (via ASAPSports):
DC Mike Stoops
Q. Did you speak with Mark about his familiarity with Georgia?
MIKE STOOPS: A little bit. Not much. You know, we have our own way. You have this much time to dissect a team, you’re going to know a lot about them just by processing over an extended period of time. You can see why they didn’t have success. It was pretty obvious. You know, things obviously they didn’t do as well as they would have liked. But you know, we play similar styles. So you see a lot of similarities, what they like to do. So you just kind of process information. You project that information, how it’s going to pertain to you in this game, and that’s really all you really can do. And we are a lot more similar than people think on both sides of the ball. Some of their stuff, they came here, you can see some of our offense and what they do in their personnel.
DE DJ Ward
Q. You’ve beaten SEC teams pretty much every year. Do you think there’s still a lack of respect for the way you play the game and the way Big 12 plays around the country?
D.J. WARD: Yeah, I think so. I guess it’s just what the narrative is and that’s why we’re going to go out here and try to change it and make it a different story. I heard the whole Big 12, SEC thing before, and our record against the SEC is pretty good. Just in general, not even about us, just the whole conference, whole SEC and Big 12, trying to prove that Big 12 can play physical football. Guess that’s about it.
DB Steven Parker
Q. In your film study about Georgia, talk about the quarterback and what you’ve seen out of him especially as a young player?
STEVEN PARKER: He has a strong arm, he can put the ball in spaces that where only his receiver can get it. He’s going to be a gamer. So we’re going to have to be ready.
Q. Strange for you to look across the field in a game of this magnitude and see a true freshman quarterback?
STEVEN PARKER: No, not at all. It doesn’t surprise me at all. It takes a team to get here and he’s done a great job of leading this team. It doesn’t surprise me that I’ll be lining up across from a freshman. That doesn’t matter. If you’re ready, you’re ready.
Q. Going back to Fromm, what can you guys do to get him inaccurate? He’s a 62 percent passer, pretty good for a freshman, what can you do to disrupt him when it comes to being able to find the right receivers?
STEVEN PARKER: Pressure, pressure, pressure. We got to — it’s going to be a physical game and we have to show our physicality as a defense and just as a team. He’s going to have to feel our presence and he’s going to have to feel like he’s going to have to be on his heels.
Q. Is this going to be a different challenge dealing with Georgia’s bigger receivers. Emmanuel said that’s something you don’t really see a lot in the Big-12?
STEVEN PARKER: Honestly we have seen some, especially Iowa State. Iowa State has three, 6′-3″ and up receivers. They got some great players. But talking about it, that’s kind of what the Georgia receivers kind of remind us from, they got some height in a way. Their slot receivers, they can run very well, just like the 6′-4″ receiver that they have. We’re going to have our — we’re definitely going to have our work cut out for us.
Q. Talk about Jake Fromm. Obviously their running game is what makes them go, but he’s been really composed as a freshman. You played a lot as a young guy, what’s the biggest adjustment? Is it just size and speed or is it mentally being able to like get over mistakes that you make?
STEVEN PARKER: That’s exactly what it is. You have to be able to just squash any mistakes that you made. If you’re a person that goes through hard times and you think about it, you’re not going to thrive that way just because you’re going to be over thinking about the mistake that you made, so that’s one thing about being young, you have to be able to get over things very fast and I feel like with Jake Fromm, he’s a guy that does that very well.
Q. There’s all that talk about the Big-12’s defenses as well. You were able to stop Chubb and Michel, what do you think that would say to the country?
STEVEN PARKER: It would say that Big-12 plays defense and that we’re not backing down from anybody. A lot of people expect us to bow down or basically run away from the physical game and honestly we want to meet it head on. This is what we come here to Oklahoma for, we come here to play in big games and it’s going to be a physical one.
DE/LB Ogbonnia Okoronkwo
Q. Your success against the SEC, does that give you any confidence?
OGBONNIA OKORONKWO: Oh, yeah, definitely, we’ve done it time and time again. I don’t know why it’s still a topic of conversation that we’re not physical enough. We’ve done it countless times. But that’s the nature of the beast. We’re ready to play, though, and show what we can do.
Q. No matter how this game turns out, has Georgia seen anything like you guys’ offense?
OGBONNIA OKORONKWO: I don’t think anybody in the country has seen — unless you’ve played us, our offense has so many weapons, and it’s being conducted by the best player in the country. So I don’t think there’s really a way to prepare. You’ve just got to hope you can slow them down a little bit.
Q. Are you guys entering — do you feel like an underdog in this game?
OGBONNIA OKORONKWO: Yeah, for sure. Like even now, people still like are saying that our defense is this and that, we’re going to get ran all over, and everybody in our room, we’re all laughing because we know what we’re — we know what we’re about to do. We know how we’ve been preparing.
Saturday Down South reports and comments on the news around the Southeastern Conference as well as larger college football topics.
