“I’m just proud of them,” Stoops said of his players. “Their preparation has been good. They’re getting more and more confident; they’re playing better in the back end. The pressure has increased. Just across the board, they’re playing much better.”
Senior defensive end Calvin Taylor isn’t surprised by the improvements.
“We always knew we had a lot of talent. Yeah, we lost a lot of talent last year. But now we’re a program that’s just building guys and bringing [new] ones in. It’s just ‘next man up’ – that’s our philosophy,” Taylor said. “It just took some time – a little bit more time than we would have wanted – to just gel.