Oklahoma's reasons for concern

The Sooners are 1-0, but the passing game is showing an ugly trend

Updated: September 3, 2012, 3:05 PM ET

By KC Joyner | ESPN Insider

One of the best sports quotes of all time is a Chris Berman-Tom Jackson classic: Once is an accident, twice is a trend, three times is a fact.

That adage can be useful in analyzing the Oklahoma Sooners and UCLA Bruins, two teams that won their first games of the 2012 college football season but made vastly different impressions.

Let's start with the Sooners, the team that did not make such a great impression in Week 1. Their 24-7 victory against the UTEP Miners was a woeful showing by a team that came into the season's opening weekend ranked No. 4 in the country in both the AP and USA Today polls and is seen as the favorite to win the Big 12 title.

That score was actually somewhat misleading, as Oklahoma was leading by a mere three points headed into the fourth quarter and could easily have been behind on the scoreboard were it not for three missed field goals by two UTEP kickers.

At first glance, this rough beginning might be chalked up to the type of sluggish start a lot of teams go through during their first creampuff matchup of the season. But the truth of the matter is that the Sooners' passing game was out of synch in just about every manner imaginable, and quarterback Landry Jones continued an alarming trend from last season that could continue to haunt Oklahoma in 2012.

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