OU has been winning (10-1, 7-1 Big 12) and sits the Big 12, tied with OSU.

The Sooners have not been dominating on the scoreboard but they have managed to win every close game except for the one loss at Baylor.

The OU defense was stout against Iowa State.

The OU defense held Iowa State to 51 rushing yards (season low by an OU opponent and season low for ISU) and limited Cyclones leading rusher Breece Hall to just 58 yards (entered the day averaging 117.2 rushing yards per game).

“It’s the best defensive front in the conference,” ISU coach Matt Campbell said. “What a challenge. What a battle. But they are outstanding on the defensive front.”

OU and ISU were tied late in the first half and the Cyclones were driving. OU’s Key Lawrence knocked loose a ball and defensive lineman Jalen Redmond scooped it and raced 42 yards for a touchdown return. That gave OU a 14-7 lead at halftime.

“It was a critical, critical play in the game,” OU defensive coordinator Alex Grinch said. “It’s a momentum play, and probably is a pretty good representation of the lack thereof of our ability to have momentum plays over the course of the year. It’s very, very difficult to play defense in this day and age without those.”

The OU passing game suffered as the Cyclones put extra defensive backs in to stifle freshman quarterback Caleb Williams and his receivers.

“They run their scheme so well that if you don’t run it some, you’re gonna be sitting there throwing against drop-eight coverages all day, and that requires a lot of precision,” OU coach Lincoln Riley said. “And today was a day where we were not as precise at times as we needed to be in the throw game, but to be able to run it, that was obviously one of the differentiating factors in the game.”

Williams hit only 8 of 18 passing attempts for 87 yards – the first time OU has had fewer than 100 yards passing during Riley’s tenure as head coach. He had one interception.

OU’s Kennedy Brooks ran for 115 yards  while Williams ran 74 yards for a score and passed for another touchdown.

“Obviously we ran the ball pretty decent on the day,” Riley said. “I thought there were some really, really positive things there. The throw game was not very sharp there. Close on a lot of accounts, close on a lot of throws. Just didn’t execute very good in the throw game, just kind of top to bottom. Wasn’t near as sharp there obviously as we need to be.”

Oklahoma had seven sacks against an Iowa State team that only allowed a dozen sacks through their first 10 games.

“You just saw the consistency aspect of things and guys being able to do it not just once but a willingness to continue to kind of keep chipping away,” Grinch said.

“You’re not going to get home every single time but that one time you get discipline or something like that you’re going to miss an opportunity. In so many ways guys play disciplined football, but they also play with an edge and that’s what that’s what’s required in this month.”

OU’s Pat Fields saw Justin Broiles deflect ISU quarterback Brock Purdy’s 41st pass of the day and then intercepted it in at the OU 3-yard line to save the win late in the game.

“Really proud of the response of our football team after the loss last week and then had an interesting week of practice, had a couple disruptions that the guys handled,” Riley said. “Again, coming off a loss, you could have kinda said ‘poor me’ and let it pile on and not been ready to play against a really good football team.

“And that wasn’t the case. Our guys really took a disjointed week and handled it extremely well, so I’m proud of that, and it was just a complete team win.”

Riley is tired of being asked to apologize for close victories.

“We just win… we’ve had disappointing moments in this season, sure.” Riley said. “We’re 10-1. Go pass that along to anybody else and see what they think about that.”