The Football Brainiacs

Hey guys!  A few people have been hitting me up on twitter and in e mail about maybe throwing together some examples of how the O-Line has gotten better since the beginning of the year.  Shout out to my boy L.T.  who had a part in giving me the idea.  Rather than having one big massive Trench Warfare post, I figured we’d have 12 days O’ Trenchin’ with a post a day finishing up right around New Years Eve for the Orange Bowl.   With that, in honor of Bob and Doug McKenzie(Strange Brew), On the first day O’Trenchin’ ol’ Jy gave to me..a beer.

 

 

Well, there’s no other place to start than with the first game against Akron.  Going into the season I was really excited about the new offense based on how excited the players seemed to be coming out of the spring and fall camp.  Like most of you I expected to see the Sooners just come out and light up Akron early and often.  By the end of the game most of the Sooner faithful were pleased with the final outcome, but several comments about how good Akron’s d line was kind of ruled the day.  On a couple of points I should have known better.  First with so many new starters up front, a new qb, and a new system I should have known that it would take a while to get the offense on track.

In this first picture the Sooners got 3rd and 12 , and they run a draw.  Looking at the top arrow Orlando Brown in his first start is looking the wrong way.  Had he been looking outside correctly he would see the linebacker coming across and picked him up.  Second, the right tackle, Dru Samia, also in his first start at the bottom arrow should never be getting beat on a draw.  He completely opens his hips, opens the gate and the guy has run the hoop on him.  Third, you can see Darlington’s back #56.  Looping around him on a fold block is Jonathan Alvarez.  He doesn’t get around in time, and finally Samaje Perine ended up falling down on the play.  So while it looks really bad, and it was, it was all little things that the guys were messing up at early on.  If this is blocked cleanly, Sterling has his guy stalked and Samaje is one on one with the safety who’s back about the 1st down line.  I’ll take that matchup every time.

 

 

On this second play, this is a 1st and 10 pass for the Sooners.  The circled Akron defender is at the original line of scrimmage.  Looking at the red arrow, we see that Joe Mixon has gone too far forward in his eagerness, and is now running back towards Baker to help out on the D Tackle that Darlington let squeeze him back.  The real point of this whole thing is that most everyone has gotten pushed back eight yards.  That’s not good.  Needless to say, the Sooners did progress a great deal since September, but early on there were some things we weren’t doing well as a group.

 

 

Not a minute later, here is a tailor made pocket.  Much better on the inside, and Baker is standing tall back there with tons of time.  If you check the top two defenders(blue dots) they’re in Man with a safety over the top.  With Sterling running that way, he’s going to clear into that area they’ve vacated.  Durron is coming across right at Sterling, and the circled linebacker will pick him up.  Sterling will have a lot of green grass to operate, and we all know how good he is in the open field.  So when it was blocked well here, inexplicably Baker takes off.

 

 

But here, we see a tick later, Baker got antsy and took off for no reason.  Now with the leverage of his o-line negated, it makes it look like bad protection.  Going back to the previous picture we saw where Sterling was going and now how wide open he is with his hand up.  Before you blame it on Big O(Orlando Brown), Baker was standing on the top hash at the 26 yard line, and Big O has run that d-end four yards past where Baker was.  This is likely a TD if Baker doesn’t get happy feet.

 

 

Finally, in the Akron game that the Sooners ultimately went on to win 41-3, there were a lot of opportunities had the offense executed much cleaner.  It was a combination of several factors, that week after week with personnel tweaks, repetition and practice, the Sooners slowly but surely cleaned it up and ended up being a much better offense by the end of the year.  Tomorrow we’ll be able to show a little bit more and hopefully the progression will show itsself as we move along.  Enjoy you filthy animals!