Open Post | Weekend, December 3rd – 5th
Posted on: December 3, 2021
An Exodus was Coming Anyway
– Super K – Posted on: November 30, 2021
I know part of what is bothering Sooner fans right now is seeing players jump in the transfer portal. First of all, a player can remove their name from their portal. So, until they leave nothing is set in stone.
Secondly, just as some players from the portal leave when the coach left, players from other schools can come when the new coach arrives. The Sooners are just on the receiving end of this right now but the Sooners will get the ball in their hands soon enough and the tide will turn.
But what I wanted to mention was that there was an exodus brewing anyway – at least at certain positions.
The secondary was going to see a number of transfers. The ridiculous musical chairs that was going on as a way to mask the lack of real physical and skill development was…well, ridiculous. Grinch and co actually believed a 6’2 220 lb kid could play corner? In what world? Anyways, I don’t want to get started on a rant about the back-end personnel and development decisions. What I will say is right now, the possibility of those players leaving is still on the table but at least they are on a wait and see mode. If BV is hired, it obviously changes things.
On the offensive side of the ball, Rambo’s success at Miami caught a lot of people’s attention. A lot of OU’s WRs run in the same camp. For a bunch of offensive gurus it doesn’t look great when a kid leaves your program after severely underperforming and ends up at a school with a defensive head coach only to break reception records.
So unless OU under Lincoln had a 4.3 kid or a kid with freakish hand-eye control and body control, a receiver was just going to be a dude?
Which brings me to a final point (at least for this post), for all of you worried about OU losing out on the 5-star 2023 kids they had committed, OU had four and five star kids on campus, what were they doing? And so what if Lincoln had a bunch of early commits, he had a bunch of early 2022 commits as well and where are they?
Yeah, not committed to OU. Remember early commitments from Luther Burden, Talyn Shettron, Jordan Hudson? Oh and remember that one time they didn’t take a commitment from Evan Stewart?
Maybe I’m just getting started here but just because you couldn’t hear the alarm bells, doesn’t mean there weren’t plenty going off.
Quick Hitter | Bedenbaugh
– Charlie S – Posted on: November 30, 2021
Just a couple quick notes on Coach B and the happenings around him…
***First, I have touched base with numerous OL commits and targets (of note), and to a man, each of them said Coach B has been in touch with them and has been very upfront and honest with them.
***One of the guys I spoke with said ‘Coach B was really straightforward. Said “he’s not sure what his future holds, but he told me my future is at OU”
***Source close to Bedenbaugh indicated that he is being straight forward because not only is that just his nature, but also reiterated he honestly doesn’t know how this will play out. As I mentioned yesterday, the man needs to secure his next job for his family and there are no guarantees when a new staff is brought in.
***I did touch base with Pancake Hunter who decommitted and he did say that if Bedenbaugh is retained, OU would stay in consideration.
Behind the Scenes | The Structure of the Secondary Was Not Sound
– Charlie S – Posted on: November 30, 2021
So… let’s dig in on the secondary of the ‘Speed D’, shall we?
Let me start by pointing out some of the positives of the design, development, and delivery of Speed D in the secondary.
I love it in concept. You ideally use speed and length in conjunction with aggressive techniques and a lot of man-on-man coverage. Your DBs are designed to reroute/ disrupt receivers at the line and have the speed and length to recover when a receiver gets through.
I believe Grinch and Manning did a wonderful job implementing the scheme. It showed results in year one and things actually got a bit better in year two.
Year three was an unmitigated disaster on the backend, however, and I believe that came about based on… you guessed it… structural flaws.
Structural flaws in regard to staffing choices and structural flaws in regard to personnel decisions.
Let’s start with the staffing decisions… let me whip out my toolbox, please.
Over the course of the season, you had probably become sick of me writing about ‘not having enough tools in the toolbox’ to make the project fit together seamlessly. “So when things weren’t working, what do you do? You hit it harder with the one tool you have, in this case the hammer, and live with the results.”
The ill-equipped toolbox was Roy Manning as corners coach. I like Roy Manning. I think he is probably a really great guy to be around and I believe the guys in his room initially enjoyed having him around. He is energetic and engaging.
He was not an established corners coach. YES… a good football coach is a good football coach and as I said, he did a fabulous job of implementing the scheme, but when a coach runs out of tools (in-depth knowledge of a position and the use of multiple techniques) to deliver to his players, everyone gets hurt. OU has a lot of talent in that corners room, many of whom would be starting at many other schools under a CB technician or specialist. I do not see one corner that got markedly better than they were when they first stepped on campus. He just did not have the tools to get his guys to their maximum ceiling. It was a no win situation for any of them, Coach Manning included.
It was apparent from the beginning. If you recall, a couple cycle backs, OU was recruiting Jahquez Robinson who is now at Alabama. Robinson was very high on OU. Very high. He told me point blank that the reason he didn’t pull the trigger to OU was because Manning had no track record. He even added that he would have been likely to commit if Chip Viney were the corners coach. It was just an ill-conceived experiment from the beginning, so the structure was not sound in regard to staffing there.
Inch, mirror, punch is one technique. It is not a toolbox. But that’s all there was and, when that wasn’t working, what do you do if you’re not getting reinforced training through practicing different techniques?
Then you start looking at the personnel. Let’s go back to the last game the Sooners played. Your starting secondary was Woodi Washington and DJ Graham at corners with Pat Fields, DTY, and Justin Broiles at safety and nickel.
The ONLY guy out of those five that Grinch/Manning recruited is DJ Graham, and he was recruited to OU as an athlete, not specifically a corner.
The personnel decisions over the years were head-scratching for sure. Yes, Tre Brown and Tre Norwood both got drafted and both are doing well in the league. Should Manning and Grinch get some credit there? Absolutely. Should they get a ton of credit there? No way. Tre Brown, at Oklahoma, was what he was for four years. He was a kid who got by on his athletic ability but was still susceptible to the big play. Tre Brown is living his best life in the NFL and that is awesome, but he was not a product of Manning’s tutelage at corner. He was a beneficiary of tremendous genes and a great work ethic.
Tre Norwood was perhaps the best OU DB last year on the field. However, it took the staff half of the year and multiple position changes to get him on the field and the main reason they got him out there was that Bookie was having such a rough year! They left the best DB on the team at the time on the bench for half a season!
Something else to consider regarding those two; how many Sooner fans would have expected them to be playing significant minutes in the NFL in 2021? Brown played in five games, starting in three, before an injury sidelined him. Norwood has played in all 11 games, starting in three. Both of them had good talent and athleticism, but did not show solid technique at OU. And yet, a few months into NFL training, both had turned that talent and athleticism into an NFL product.
Let’s look at Woodi Washington. Woodi was an inherited recruit and he came in as a freshman and immediately got put on a shelf. He worked in a very limited role at corner early his freshman year and he got an emergency start against LSU, AT SAFETY, because he was cast to the side at corner. While OU got their butts beat against LSU, Woodi was a sort of bright spot as he displayed some solid coverage. The next spring, suddenly he was an emerging corner. It is likely he would never have been rescued from the place Kendal Dennis currently occupies in the lost and found if he did not get an emergency start at a different position.
Jaden Davis was an inherited recruit. His freshman year he won a starting spot by the time Texas rolled around. I was very proud of that as I had predicted that would be the case. Davis displayed solid coverage and, at that time, he was the most reliable tackler in the corner room. He took PT away from Parnell Motley… as a freshman.
DJ Graham came in the next year. He was an athlete that OU placed in the corner room. As a freshman, he came in and took playing time away from Jaden Davis.
Latrell McCutchin was a heralded recruit last cycle. As a freshman, he came in and took PT away from DJ Graham… see where I am going with this?
These freshmen come in and take spots from established guys… yet, for the most part, that has been the pinnacle of their careers on the field in Norman. They appear to regress as time goes by. They appear to have come into the program more prepared than they are in their second and third years.
These guys all had offers from a ton of schools around the country. Josh Eaton, Kendall Dennis, Bryson Washington, Justin Harrington, Billy Bowman, Key Lawrence, Damond Harmon, Jordan Mukes, Jeremiah Criddell… these guys all have talent.
Billy Bowman, brought to Norman as an athlete, won the starting nickel spot in camp. Flat out beat Criddell for the spot and started the games throughout the first half of the season. The corners were terrible (some due to injury, some due to negligence IMO), so Bowman was asked to try his hand at corner in an obvious moment of desperation and he obliged. He did not fair well at corner… and then poof… you never saw him again, as Justin Broiles assumed the starting nickel spot. Baffling.
You moved a starter, a freshman starter, midway through the year, because the structure of the DB room was not sound enough to have any number of actual corners ready to go. Lack of development much? Where are the guys YOU recruited to play corner?
This year, your best defensive back was likely Key Lawrence… who could not get on the field at safety without an injury to another player. Once he got in at safety, he created turnovers and displayed good coverage. Suddenly, DTY gets healthy and Key is moved to corner… another desperation heave at the corner spot. He had mixed results early on at corner but rounded into form and played better than the other guys. Still… he was not even on the field against OkState to start the game.
Alex Grinch, the man of a million words, decided that this year his mantra would be about ‘practice’ as opposed to last years dead horse of ‘turnovers’. Alex Grinch spoke of understanding the mistakes he made the previous year by not rotating the safeties enough to get guys experience and offer them opportunities to openly compete for the job. Alex Grinch did the exact same thing this season as he did last season. He didn’t rotate, at all, at the safety spots.
Pat Fields had 769 snaps. He was by far the lowest graded (PFF) defender on the team, yet he had more than 100 additional snaps than the next closest guy on the defense. The next closest guy… that was Justin Broiles at 653 snaps. The highest rated DB in allllllllll of college football in 2021 was Bryson Washington. Washington got 22 defensive snaps on the year. All against Western Carolina. The man could not even get a look during a real game. Not one snap. ZERO.
I guess Washintgon didn’t practice well on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
From early in the year, right up to its conclusion, I would talk about players and coaches feeling the pressure and there was a lot of frustration building. This was basically an arrow on a map pointing directly to the secondary. Starters, role players, scout team guys, and coaches. All frustrated and unhappy.
There was a lot of hammering being done when the project was calling for wrenches and screwdrivers. In other words, the tools weren’t even in the toolbox… they weren’t there from the beginning. By the end, the kids knew it, and the staff knew it.
As things stand, I would expect you see some of that young, untested talent leave the rooms. Can you blame them?
A new staff will come to Norman, and if they get there in a timely fashion, they will be ecstatic with the talent they have in the room and they will do their best to re-recruit some of the guys. It may be too late for a few of them, but in my opinion, the personnel handling in the backend was gross negligence and blatant favoritism at its peak. Certainly, a structural failure when zero guys you recruited at DB specifically see any serious playing time in a three-year period.
Sooners Recruits Post Riley | Decommit List
– Charlie S – Posted on: November 30, 2021
With Lincoln Riley’s departure to USC, we expect there to be many decommitments from the program.
I will keep a list here and update it:
1. Brandon Inniss – ’23 WR – 11/28
2. Treyaun Webb – ‘23 RB – 11/28
3. Malachi Nelson ’23 QB – 11/28
4. Kobie McKinzie ’22 LB – 11/28
5. Pancake Hunter ’22 OL – 11/29
6. Derrick Moore – ’22 DL – 11/29
7. Makai Lemon – ’23 WR – 11/30
8. Raleek Brown – ’22 RB – 12/1
The Latest | Rumors and Speculation
– Charlie S – Posted on: December 1, 2021
Not a lot new…
***Still the one consistent name we are hearing is Venables
***I know there are reports out there about Rhule and Brady, and we have heard the name being thrown around, but we have nothing credible there at this time on our end
***James has heard Lanning is in the mix as he reported earlier, but we have not picked up any new buzz on him
***Yes, we have seen, heard, and felt all the buzz on social media about something being imminent…as we have stated, we do not expect this to drag out so that all adds up.
***Do not buy anything about Lane Kiffin and OU at this time
***My gut and the way our devices are buzzing with inquiries and ‘tips’ say this is…how would Liclon Riley put it? ‘CLOSE” to coming to it’s conclusion.
Sourced Coaching Notes | Update
– Super K – Posted on: December 1, 2021
***Was told by a source close to Matt Rhule, “It’s not going to be Matt Rhule”. In other words, we don’t expect him to be OU’s next coach.
***We continue to believe it is likely Venables. James has heard through a source that coach V is already reaching out to guys to put together his staff.
***We have heard that he is likely to bring Troy DC, Brandon Hall with him. Hall has held a few roles at OU in the past and has done a dang good job with the defense at Troy. But, obviously whatever Hall’s role may be, it will be coach V’s defense.
***Also, we do believe coach V will look to hire Lebby. As you all know Lebby is not only a Sooner but he’s married to Art Briles’ daughter and coached under Briles. He knows the Briles offense and OU fans know that that offense is devastating. It is basically unstoppable with peak athletes.
***If this happens, its going to be an upgrade IMO but we will get into that more later.
Sourced | The Vibe Around the Lebby Rumors
– CJ Vogel – Posted on: December 1, 2021
Hello my friends up north. Aren’t coaching searches fun? Hope you all are getting work done aside from being glued to FlightTrackers and refreshing the TFB board and Twitter feed.
Anyways. Back to football.
Should things go according to plan with Venables being hired and Jeff Lebby joining him as the offensive coordinator, I have some news to share.
*** From talking to a few sources, the hire of Lebby would be a welcome addition to the OU staff.
*** Several recruits would be happy with the hiring and will be enough to keep several of the 2022 offensive members in the class.
*** Lebby’s reputation as a strong offensive mind proceeds him in the recruiting world. He has recruited the DFW area before and good ties to the area.
I would be a fan of this hire should everything fall in place.
Update | Timeline of Announcement
– Charlie S – Posted on: December 2, 2021
Just wanted to follow up on K’s note about the timeline of the hire.
Yesterday, K noted ‘Was told a rough estimate on the expected announcement date for a new coach should be towards the end of the weekend or early next week.’
You can add *At the latest* to that sentence. In other words, K’s source was saying that he did not expect the hire to go beyond Monday at the latest.
Sourced Quick Hitter | Signs of Prepping for an Announcement
– Charlie S – Posted on: December 2, 2021
Source tells Super K that the signs of a potential announcement are growing.
The field is being prepped and the offices are being cleaned.
Again, nothing over the top here, but the signs are pointing towards an announcement in the near future.
Coaching Search | The Latest
– Super K – Posted on: December 2, 2021
***As I previously noted, we expect the HC announcement to come sometime towards the end of the weekend or early next week.
***It sounds like it’s going down Sunday afternoon.
***As I previously noted, we were hearing that Venables had been reaching out to people to see who would be open to going to Oklahoma.
***As of today I continue to hear Venables name the most and my sense is that he will be your guy.
***I do know that Fickell’s name has been floating around and I think people are putting some pieces together when it comes to Fickell and OU. 1) Why wait till Sunday to announce if it’s a guy who isn’t playing Saturday? 2) A source tells me that Fickell declined to interview for the Notre Dame job. So I think people are putting those two things together and assuming there is a strong chance it’s Fickell.
***I suppose that’s possible, but again, Brent is the person I’m hearing most consistently as the guy. So, I’m sticking with my Venables pick and I’d put my confidence on it at around an 8 or so.
***I know the name Dan Lanning has been floating around. I just don’t see that. From what I’ve heard, he’s a great guy and a relentless recruiter. But to pass up BV with all his experience, championships and ties to OU for a guy who has been a co-DC for a couple years, I’m not buying it.
***Been trying to find out if it’s a possibility that Lanning’s name has been thrown around mistakenly as a HC candidate and if perhaps instead he is a DC candidate. I can’t confirm that but if Joe C had that up his sleeve…wow…wow.
***Also, got some news from inside Ole Miss. I don’t know if Lebby is a done deal but I was told that folks inside Ole Miss know he’s a candidate and that he will go if offered. Again, that would be a home run hire, in my opinion.
***One thing just to add a little speculation on the Dan Lanning DC possibility (again, this is nothing sourced – just having some fun). Muschamp is waiting in the wings at UGA. So, Lanning leaving would open the door for Kirby to give the DC spot to his ol’ buddy
