Bolton Named Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week

NORMAN — It didn't take long for the 2018 Oklahoma football team's defense to assert itself. The Sooners held Florida Atlantic to 324 yards (4.4 per play) in a 63-14 season-opening win on Saturday, and for his role in the victory, redshirt senior Curtis Bolton was named Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week on Monday morning.

In his first career start, Bolton, a 6-0, 218-pound linebacker from Murrieta, Calif., registered a career-high six tackles, including a tackle for loss. The six stops were one shy of the team's high for the day.

Bolton also came up big on special teams, recovering a blocked punt by Lee Morris in the FAU end zone to give the Sooners a 14-0 first-quarter lead. It was OU's first blocked punt recovered for a touchdown since 2002 (Will Peoples vs. Texas Tech).

Oklahoma scored the first 56 points of the game and didn't allow the Owls to score until the final minute of the third quarter. Many of OU's starters didn't play in the second half.

Florida Atlantic entered the game with the nation's second-longest winning streak (10 games) and was No. 30 in the AP's preseason rankings.

The Sooners will host UCLA on Saturday at noon CT.