Dallas — For 60 minutes, Arkansas' quarterbacks were buried in the Cotton Bowl's green paint. Afterward, they showered the Sooners with praise.
Matt Jones: "We knew they were good, but they were amazing."
Zak Clark: "They took us out of our game plan, and we never recovered."
This is how great Oklahoma's defense is. Aside from Arkansas' one field goal drive, the Razorbacks either failed to gain or lost yardage on 23 of 44 plays. That included an Oklahoma school record of nine sacks.
This is how great Oklahoma isn't. The Sooners won the Cotton Bowl, 10-3.
In answering one of the week's most frequently asked questions, both teams deserved to be here. This is a second-tier status bowl and Arkansas, picking up its fifth loss, deserves as much.
But so do the Sooners who, though superior to Arkansas and never really threatened with defeat at any time Tuesday, lack a legitimate big-play offense. Choosing an offensive MVP for the Cotton Bowl was like picking a defensive MVP for the Taliban.
Running back Quentin Griffin won by default, surely the first bowl MVP to average fewer than three yards per carry and four yards per catch with no touchdowns.
Against an Arkansas defense that surrendered 30 points or more in half of its conference games, the Sooners hung 10 on the Cotton Bowl scoreboard.
Maybe that's why Sooners offensive coordinator Chuck Long offered this ringing endorsement of quarterback Nate Hybl, when asked if the junior had gone a long way in keeping his starting job for spring practice: "He went a long way in fighting for it. It's going to be a very competitive spring."
That's shorthand for saying that injured sophomore Jason White and redshirt freshman Brent Rawls will be given a chance.
Hybl completed 75 percent of his passes (24 of 32) and committed no turnovers. Despite the lack of output, Long said he performed his job.
"That's our offense high percent passes and don't turn the ball over," Long said.
It's not terribly entertaining, and it pales in comparison to the Sooners' world class defense, a shortcoming that Long acknowledges can't last forever.
"Regardless of what our defense is," he said, "we've got to get back to being an explosive offense."
In its own way, what OU coach Bob Stoops' Sooners did to Arkansas was impressive, but the Razorbacks ranked dead last in the SEC in offense. Their passing game failed at an unbelievable level. At one point the Razorbacks had as many sacks as pass attempts (eight) and finished with just two completions.
"We went up and down that playbook," said Arkansas coach Houston Nutt, "thinking how in the world could we get the ball in the end zone."
The Razorbacks couldn't. And even the departure of linebacker Rocky Calmus and virtually certain early exit by junior safety Roy Williams, the Sooners' defense will be a force on a national level in 2002. The Stoops brothers would settle for nothing less.
The offense was supposed to be a work in progress in the post-Heupel era, but in the end there was more regress than progress.
While there is nothing wrong with the top-10 ranking they solidified against Arkansas, if the Sooners aspire to more in 2002, then the defense is going to require some help.
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