Yes, we were outcoached. Blame goes all around. On the coaching side, we had the talent advantage overall, which helped us in quarters 2-4, but we lost a close one due to:
1) poor gameplan on defense. Our run defense has been solid all year, but we are not a great pass defense and have not really played a great throwing QB. Having no plan or adjustments for Gabriel's legs is also really bad. I still don't trust PK in big games. I won't even get into the boneheaded prevent we went into to lose us the game at the end.
2) poor clock management down the stretch. Sark seems to struggle with this.
3) poor red zone calls and execution (this is a season-long problem)
4) losing the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball (even before Majors went out). If you don't think intensity/fire played a role here, I don't know what to tell you. Per 995, Sark told his team to "withstand the surge" and play collected all week. In his pregrame interview, he said he told the team to "have fun." That shit makes Mack moist. You have to approach the OU game like a prison fight and it was obvious we did not match OU's intensity in the 1st quarter or even for the whole game for that matter. If you gave their staff our talent advantage, they would have beaten us badly.
5) there's a recent SNL skit where mom is taking pictures of her daughter and prom date, and dad thinks it would be funny to pose with a gun to tell the date not to get any ideas, but the dad ends up blowing his dick off. We seem to do that in every game, multiple times on offense. I have a hard time believing that's all on the players.
However, I'm still predicting 10-2 with a rematch in the CCG.