Guerin Emig: Adrian Martinez and Murphy’s Law crash down on Owen Field and OU fails to respond

NORMAN — Amid all of the positive talk about Brent Venables’ start to his head coaching career, and Oklahoma’s start to its 2022 season, the Sooners quietly slipped two words into occasional statements.

“Coach talks about handling Murphy’s Law,” running back Eric Gray said the week of OU’s 49-14 trouncing of Nebraska. “What can go wrong will go wrong.”

It is an inevitability for every team playing college football across a season. We learn a lot about teams when they respond.

Saturday night at Owen Field, for the first time under Venables, the Sooners did not respond.

With darn near everything going wrong around them — from ill-timed penalties to ill-thrown passes to inspired combination play from Kansas State quarterback Adrian Martinez and scatback Deuce Vaughn — OU dropped its Big 12 Conference opener to the Wildcats 41-34.

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Celebrate if you bleed purple. This was not the Martinez stuck in the mud of a 17-10 loss to Tulane last week. This was the quarterback who outplayed Spencer Rattler in Nebraska’s losing cause in Norman a year ago.

Martinez was bold and accurate when throwing, and an effective complement to Vaughn on the ground. K-State topped 500 total yards with a run-pass balance that kept Venables’ defense, which swarmed into the Nebraska backfield last week, on the back foot all game.

The frustration poured into one telling play with K-State icing the game with just over three minutes remaining — safety Billy Bowman’s flagrant face mask of Wildcats receiver Phillip Brooks after linebacker DaShaun Shite missed a shot at a tackle.

Two plays later, Martinez broke containment on third-and-16, chugged ahead 52 yards and sent a stadium full of OU fans headed home to curse the night.

Frustration seeped even deeper into the Sooners’ offense.

OU missed a touchdown at the end of the first quarter when Dillon Gabriel missed an open Drake Stoops two steps behind the defense, and missed a fourth-and-3 conversion late in the third quarter when Gabriel missed Stoops breaking wide open at the first-down marker.

The Sooners lined up to attempt fourth down tries on two other occasions Saturday night, only to have tight end Brayden Willis false start in the second quarter, and to take a delay-of-game penalty in the third.

The disjointed play left Jeff Lebby’s offense with all the rhythm of Elaine Benes dancing on “Seinfeld.”

Take the start of the third quarter with OU trailing 24-17. Gabriel put the ball in Gray’s hands, and the OU back ran with some rage, ripping off sizable gains to take the Sooners across midfield.

Both possessions, however, were short-circuited by penalties on OU guard Chris Murray, the first for holding and the second for a false start. The Sooners settled for Zach Schmit’s 44-yard field goal the first time and wound up punting the second after that delay-of-game penalty on fourth down.

Gabriel finished with 330 yards and four touchdowns through the air with no interceptions. A respectable stat line, yes, but also obscured by two problems.

First, Gabriel went 8-of-13 for just 51 yards over the first four series of the second half, a period during which OU’s defense held K-State to a field goal and gave the offense a chance to pull ahead. Instead, the Sooners could only close within 24-20.

Unlike his first three games at OU, Gabriel needed to be dynamic. He was not.

Martinez was. And that made for the second problem related to quarterback play Saturday night.

Before his game-ending kneel-down, Martinez accounted for 382 of K-State’s 511 yards and all five of their touchdowns. He was generally well-protected by his offensive line, and proved impossible to contain the few times his wall cracked. The Sooners failed the register a sack.

Martinez outplayed Gabriel as obviously as he did Rattler in Norman last September. The Sooners survived Nebraska that afternoon because they made enough plays at opportune times.

That was not the case Saturday night. Not with Murphy’s Law grabbing hold at Owen Field.

Crimson-clad players and coaches gathered near midfield after Martinez’s kneel-down, faced the Pride of Oklahoma and stood together at attention until the OU alma mater finished.

Then they trudged dejectedly to their locker room, where they no doubt talked about responding next Saturday at TCU.

They’ll need to respond to the Horned Frogs better than they responded to the Wildcats on a night when everything that could go wrong did so.

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