Pressure builds for OU football's Ben Arbuckle following uninspiring 14-6 win over New Mexico

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NORMAN — Ben Arbuckle felt he and his offense had the best week of practice in his two seasons in Norman.

Yet, it looked like the worst performance in a win from an Arbuckle-led OU offense so far in his short tenure.

Now the burner is fired up, pinning pressure on Arbuckle to figure out how to get the Sooners offense to produce.

Arbuckle, Oklahoma football’s offensive coordinator, led his offense through an uninspiring performance in the Sooners’ 14-6 win Saturday over New Mexico inside Gaylord Family — Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.

It’s the second game in a row the Sooners have failed to produce much offensively, turning all heads toward Arbuckle and his job.

“I’m not going to talk about confidence. He’s our offensive coordinator,” said OU coach Brent Venables postgame. “We got a lot of work to do to improve, to get better. We’re going to need to make improvement if we’re going to have a chance to win the games against the teams we’re going to play.

“We got to create explosive plays on offense more consistently and get into a rhythm where we move the football and complement each other, play complementary football. We obviously didn’t do that today.”

The offense truly struggled to do much of anything against the Lobos and had one of the worst offensive performances in recent memory.

Arbuckle said he felt the Sooners had their best days of prep since his time started last season in Norman, however that didn’t translate into a great — even a solid or a fine or a mediocre — performance.

“I thought we had our best week of practice since I've been at Oklahoma,” Arbuckle said postgame. “We understand that we got to make it happen on game day. OK? Great week of preparation, but it's an expectation that you go out there and you don't have to play perfect, but you got to play well. And I got to call the game well. But shoot, we got to get it to translate.”

In Saturday’s game, the Sooners had 299 total yards of offense and just 14 points. It obviously didn’t translate from practice to game day.

The offense looked sloppy for almost the entire game. There was never any continuity or momentum built by the offense and there is no single facet of the offense that’s causing the problem, it’s a little bit from each. However, it starts with Arbuckle.

New Mexico had a simple plan — force the Sooners to pass the ball over the top and load the box to stop any running ability. The Lobos executed their perfect game plan and Venables said the Lobos’ scheme worked and made sense because of his offense’s performance so far this season.

“(They are) just not respecting us pushing the ball down the field, obviously. Why else would you do that?” Venables said. “Yeah, I expect more. We’ve got to be a lot better than that. That can’t be the product, we got a lot of work to do there.

“We’ve got to get better collectively as a team, we got to play better complimentary football, point blank.”

OU quarterback John Mateer did throw two interceptions Saturday, but he’s largely the only reason the Sooners were able to move the ball at all against the Lobos.

Mateer finished 19-of-25 with 238 yards and two touchdowns against the Lobos while also rushing 10 times for 17 yards. He had a subpar day, but needed to be stellar for the Sooners to score more than twice.

His two touchdowns were big-play scores with a 29-yard touchdown pass to tight end Hayden Hansen and a 53-yard touchdown pass to Isaiah Sategna III. However, Hansen broke off four tackles to score while the Sategna touchdown had a massive fan assist.

Mateer said postgame that he only saw Sategna running down the field wide open because the crowd began to cheer… yikes.

Mateer, though, didn’t get help from the run game as the Sooners ran 32 times for a whopping 61 yards — 1.9 yards per carry.

A lot of what the Sooners ran didn’t work Saturday, or even last week, and it’s a jarring realization that OU has an offensive problem, again.

“We all understand the standard. We all understand the expectation. I'll leave it at that,” Arbuckle said. “ We understand the standard. We understand the expectation. We're going to put our heads down. We're going to go to work.”

Arbuckle is at the forefront of the offensive issues and feels the heat — both outside and inside — coming toward him and the future of his job.

It’s gone downhill, fast. From an offseason full of hype and promises of figuring out the run game have fallen flat on its face.

The OU defense has proved time and time again that it’s one of the best defenses in the country and the defenders simply don’t have a complimentary offense to be a top team in the country.

“Yeah, I mean he's the head coach. This is his football program,” Arbuckle said. “At the end of the day, the defense plays their butt off week in and week out, and we got to get up to the standard of it. And so, I mean, absolutely.”

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