This is where the talking ends and the Sooners take things up on the field.

David Boren had his say. He has been lampooned in the national press and defended by at least one local columnist who still feels he did the right thing for the Sooner Nation in the short term and the Sooners themselves in the long. Yet all the good it will do now depends more on the guys on the field than anything he may further say or do.

Bob Stoops, some say, for the first time, made an excuse.

“I think, it’s fair to say,” he said earlier in the week, “you give us an extra possession we didn’t deserve, who knows what’s going to happen.”

Because OU closed its stay in Oregon with five straight scoring drives before the Ducks blocked Garrett Hartley’s stab at a record-breaking fifth field goal.

Yet once again, at least one local columnist still believes he struck the right tone at the right time, getting everything off his chest Tuesday and saying he was done with it. But whether he is or not, it doesn’t really matter. Not if his team doesn’t continue to play like the kind of club that can march into the Pacific Northwest and win on the favorite’s home field.

Or better.

Because, just for the pollsters out there who might be looking to give the Sooners a break, and particularly those who aren’t, it might be a pretty good idea to lead at the half today for the very first time, or to allow less than 300 yards of total offense for the very first time; or, just maybe, less than 200, which would be about 200 less than OU’s been giving up.

And Paul Thompson would be wise to continue defying expectations.

It was said before the season the Sooners would be happy to settle with Thompson just not getting in the way; not by Thompson or the Sooners, just by everybody else who remembers what happened against TCU. But the fifth-year senior is playing like a veteran rather than the game-inexperienced signal-caller he really is, throwing for almost 225 yards per outing, completing 60 percent of his passes and tossing five touchdowns against three interceptions, two of which can hardly be saddled on him.

I don’t know what’s going on in the secondary, though the Sooners finally appear to have found a couple of keepers in Reggie Smith and Marcus Walker, and it remains hard to believe Brent Venables and Bobby Jack Wright were just blowing smoke that day they stood next to each other and Wright said he thought OU could be a top-10, not a top-100, defense.

Beyond Thompson, Adrian Peterson has at least lived up to expectations. He hasn’t been force fed the ball since the second half against Alabama-Birmingham and he’s still getting almost 30 carries a game, running for almost 172 yards.

So just where’s the ceiling on this team?

It has to be somewhere north of Eugene, Ore.

And that’s the Sooners’ challenge.