Oklahoma and WVU put up an offensive barnburner to rival the Chiefs and Rams’

On Monday Night Football, the Rams and Chiefs torched all conventional wisdom about what offense in an NFL game could be for 60 full minutes. The scoring kept coming in each half — 105 points in total — and the game was more about defenses finding a way to break serve with occasional stops and create turnovers than it was about putting up low numbers.

People expected points in that game. The over/under was about 63.5, the biggest in NFL history. But seeing that many points was surprising. It played out like a college game, not just with offense winning the day, but with both teams calling play after play that used to be found primarily on campus. It borrowed a little bit from a bunch of different conferences.

West Virginia and Oklahoma played in a de-facto Big 12 semifinal game and torched their own massive total (85) by the end of the third quarter. Then they scored again. And again, en route to the 59-56 Sooner win. But in every way, remember that the NFL is still adopting these shootout-game principles. Big 12 teams do this kind of thing damn near every week.

I mean, look at this:

Oklahoma’s win by a field goal set up a blockbuster rematch with Texas in the Big 12 Championship Game.

The Monday night game was fun, but detractors pointed out that from a fundamental sense things could have gone better. Both can be true at the same time.

It was fun on Friday Night in Morgantown, too, and the detractors had their say as well.

Booger’s right, given his own purview. It’s not the defense-first style of ball he grew up playing. But it’s kinda confusing, given he was on the field for the Monday Night showdown between the Chiefs and the Rams, which he and many others praised as it happened.

But what Booger’s onto (just like ESPN colleague Greg McElroy) is basically an “eye of the beholder” situation for judging the way the game is trending.

We gawk at offenses as being overly impressive relative to what we’re used to from back in the day. But we hold defenses to an outdated standard that hasn’t evolved with the sport. Nobody expects a basketball team to hold its opponent to a shutout.

What you do expect is for a good defense to maximize stops. And OU grabbed a handful of those, as WVU’s drives went:

If we believe good defense in a scenario where both offenses are juggernauts is about limiting points, then the Sooners’ two forced punts, turnover on downs, and two takeaways look solid. That requires having some context about the way these teams play.

(Also, basketball on grass isn’t entirely a joke. Some teams have embraced it as a schematic thing, too. Mike Gundy explains that here.)

Chiefs-Rams took three hours and 42 minutes. That, for an NFL game, is bonkers. OU-WVU took 3:49, and like in the Chiefs-Rams game, the Sooners and Mountaineers made use of just about all of those seconds.

There were over 1,300 total yards, a pretty large abdication from a traditional straight-on running game and passing numbers that’ll make your shoulder ache. There was also some incredible running, most notably this Kyler Murray TD run:

The games were similar in other ways. There were flags all over the field in Chiefs-Rams, and a high-profile reffing decision had a huge impact on this game, too:

It was a comfortable, familiar shootout, as opposed to what happened Monday, when we were all pleasantly surprised by that degree of outburst.

Maybe there’s something to that. After years and years of this high-octane offense being the Big 12’s brand, nobody bats an eye at 59-56.