NORMAN — A crowd of 42,436 watched the Red team defeat the White team by a 17-16 mark Saturday afternoon at the annual Oklahoma Football Spring Game presented by U.S. Fleet Tracking inside Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.
The Red team secured the victory on a 52-yard touchdown pass from Kyler Murray to Michiah Quick with 4:54 left in the fourth quarter.
Points were determined by the color of the jersey of the quarterback. If the quarterback was wearing a blue jersey, offensive points went to the Red team and defensive points to the White team (as was the case with Ogbonnia Okoronkwo's second-quarter safety), and vice versa if the quarterback was wearing a yellow jersey.
OU’s first-team players and quarterbacks were limited during the scrimmage as defenders were not allowed to tackle them. The game featured no turnovers.
“I’m more concerned with keeping guys on the field right now than I was being particular about how many yards somebody got or didn’t get,” said head coach Bob Stoops about the game’s format. “I also wanted to see guys excited, correct, and doing things the right way, executing those kinds of things, and I thought overall it was really positive in all parts of the game.
A total of four quarterbacks saw playing time in Saturday’s scrimmage, with senior Baker Mayfield picking up where he left off last season by completing 13 of his 18 passes for a team-high 142 yards in one half of work. But it was not just Mayfield who thrived in the contest.
Sophomore Kyler Murray, a transfer from Texas A&M who will sit out the 2016 season due to NCAA transfer rules, tossed the game’s only two touchdowns through the air, finishing with 136 yards on 6-of-10 passing. After connecting with Jordan Smallwood for a 33-yard strike in the third quarter for his first TD of the day, Murray wrapped up the afternoon by finding Michiah Quick for a 52-yard touchdown to seal the win for the Red squad.
“He’s prepared for this,” OU offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley said of Murray. “He’s known this was coming for a while and he’s got a great example there in Baker. Yes, you can’t do it on the field but there’s still so much more you can do to prepare yourself for that competition when you are eligible after this year.”
Freshman Austin Kendall completed 8 of 17 passes for 52 yards, while redshirt freshman walk-on Connor McGinnis completed his lone attempt for a 13-yard gain.
“He just gets better and better,” Riley said of Kendall, who enrolled at OU a semester early. “He’s pretty smart about the chances to take. It was good to see the look in his eye today, knowing the level of people – again, this kid that should be getting ready to go to prom is playing in front of a great crowd today and he handled it great. He had a great look in his eye from the beginning and really, he has the whole time. But you never really know how they’re going to react that first time, and so today was just a great step for him.
“He’s been very, very steady all spring. He missed a few things today…but he’s a little better than I thought physically. He’s shown the ability to get out of things a little bit more. We felt coming in he was a really good thrower and he’s shown nothing but that. We’ve been really happy with how just mentally he’s progressed. He’s really bought in.”
Courtesy: University of Oklahoma
