Been talking to a source I trust and let me tell you, stuff is very serious inside the program right now. I’ve been told that coach Stoops is sitting in on every position meeting. He’s got his eye on things like a hawk and while things are always serious inside the program, everything just got turned up a notch.
Simple and plain, they don’t want to take another loss this season and if they do take one it won’t be for lack of focus, effort/preparation if Stoops can help it.
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Sweet – Stoops knows there is no reason OU should have lost to TCU – The focus OU had for Tennessee was on another level compared to the rest of the season. Why is that? Can we not give it all we’ve got every week like we did for the Vols?
Too bad our head coach didn’t feel the need to have that kind of attention to detail before we dropped a game.
I think it’s part of being a boss though. You can’t micro manage all the time. You’ve got to trust your staff. And when there is a set back then you re-align things. Hopefully it’s only up from here for the Sooners because this a good team with good team chemistry.
When I was a working man I always hated being micro-managed. I always tried to give my manager’s a long leash and empowered them to run their departments. Sometimes though you have to shorten the leash and I believe that is where Bob is with Josh, not so much Mike.
“Josh, not so much Mike,” We have differing views on this. Based upon Stoops’ comments and the way the game went, I’d be very surprised if that’s the case.
We can agree to disagree. That’s allowed.
You hit the nail on the head.
Where I work, my dept. has people that are more than capable of doing their jobs. However, there is one person who is dead set on throwing others under the bus and separating themselves from the group. This is destroying the team atmosphere. Every conversation is about how everyone hates that one particular person. We celebrate when that person gets nailed for doing something wrong. That’s not how a team works. Our boss, however, just sits back and lets us deal with it as we see fit. He doesn’t step in and guide as a good boss should, and our team is falling apart.
I’m happy that Stoops is finally doing this. It’s really more than past “about time”.
Good luck trying to mitigate the Stoops hate…After one loss, some are convinced that the coaching staff is composed of idiots. Your excellent posts on the defensive schemes and player technique are now seen by many simply as validation that the staff has no idea what its doing. Too bad, cause your breakdowns are excellent.
The venom directed towards the coaches after this loss have puzzled me.
I’m not a coach and don’t ‘play’ one on the internet or on TV.
I think most of the venomous disappointment is from people who weren’t taking TCU seriously. Therefore, they are disappointed that we lost to “such a bottomfeeder” like them. The fact is TCU is a good football team. And all those that cry that “we should be in the SEC instead of this inferior conference” need to wake up. The big xii has 10 teams and five are ranked. This has been and is one of the top conferences in the country. Every team that is ranked in the big xii deserves to be and WVU should probably be their too. I was disappointed with the loss, but it wasn’t like we got ran off the field. We played a legit top 25 team and should have one, but didn’t. Now we’ve got to try to win out.
I was disappointed in the loss, what I was referring to was how much actual venom I saw spewed here towards the coaches.
It truly baffles me.
I didn’t mean you sir, or the guys on the site. More an indictment on venom from other boards I’ve seen. I knew coming in we weren’t going to walk in and smack TCU, though I was surprised at our defensive effort. So I wasn’t as surprised we lost. The venom is what I was referencing, in an explanation of what you had cited. I was explaining that the origins are from this thought that we play in an inferior conference and should just walk through it. The reality is that the big xii was always one of the best conferences in the country. While the conference lost some traditional quality programs, those all had been mediocre lately. Then two programs were added that had been good in other places. They only needed to acclimate to the change in physicality and talent level and it seems they have. There just aren’t many easy outs in conference.
BOOM! Good post E. Texas.
Man, that would be a shame for someone to take K’s and JY’s comments on our schemes and player technique
as an indictment of Stoops and his staff. I don’t think anything could be further from the truth.
I was talking about some of the fan response, not the Brainiacs. Mostly from some other message boards that have been in complete meltdown mode. I appreciate this site because there’s not as much of that. I should probably stop torturing myself at some of the others, lol.
I just echoed your comments in my reply to Colice Powell.
Your response couldn’t have been stated any more perfectly. You surprise me sometimes.
Bob’s job is to provide the vision, guidance and support. A little micro-managing is okay, but it is way too easy to go too
far. A boss that is too involved in his manager’s roll will pretty soon finding himself making all of the decisions. You push
your manager’s too far from the decision making and you will not have involved, thinking coaches. You get to do it all.
I always wanted to surround myself with people as smart and hopefully smarter than me. I provided the vision and all the support and guidance they needed and then let them fly as far and high as they could go.
Great point, there is too much to micro manage and you have to have trust in your staff going into a game, but is there nothing Stoops can do during a game? In the second half against TCU everyone could tell Trevor was struggling yet we still dialed up pass after pass, the worst example being three straight pass plays after the pick 6 (two incompletions and a sack on third down). Can Stoops not get Heupel on his headset and tell him to mix it up? I definitely trust Stoops and his staff to fix things after a loss, but it seems like a common theme is we never fix things during a game. I understand this is likely no where near as easy as it sounds, it’s always easy for us fans to be a coach from our own couch. This is just what is most frustrating though.
Why not that level of emphasis prior? All I could think during the TCU game was “Two weeks prep and this is the best we can come up with?”
CP, as much as we’d like to think that micro-managing works, it doesn’t. In business, you have hire good people and let them run the business. It creates the most energy and allows for growth and creativity. You can’t cover it all, no matter how hard you try. In order for anyone to improve, learn, get better, you have to allow them to fail. I always tell my team this: “Believe that what you are doing will work. Don’t be afraid to fail.”
You’re absolutely correct, but there’s a corollary to that rule, and that is that there must be accountability and consequences. If a sales person whiffs on an account and can explain how and why it happened and what the plan is to address that, then, fine, they live and are my children. If they don’t know or don’t care or endlessly repeat p***poor performance, then I pack their desk out for them.
There was a bit too much ‘don’t care’ and ‘endless repeat’ for me last weekend. Nice to hear, if only anecdotally, that it got up Bob’s nose as well.
We’ll see.
Bill Snyder is the biggest micro boss in football, true he’s tuff on assistants but nobody can argue his results with the talent ksu has. I really think we need to bring back mangino!!!! I said it first!!!’ Lol..
We failed miserably last week. Now someone has to take charge and get things back on track.
I was also thinking about that 2 week prep time. I think for OU it hurts them more times than not. Mike Stoops is such a great DC that if his mind has to much time to think he will out think himself, out plan himself, out coach himself. When he came back to OU he preached simplification and the Defense has steadily gotten better under his watch. Think this week we out thought everything and the end result was WE GOT OUTPLAYED!
In all fairness, TCU had played cupcakes, and nowhere near executing the full playbook. Not saying it is ever an excuse, especially for a blueblood, but there were schemes that Tech executed that were impressive. Our line was getting manhandled from the start. You can see how the D responded in the 2nd half.
Line “manhandled?” – DBs were too far off most of the day. The D-line had no chance to get to the QB when the passes were immediate.
I don’t think for a second that the emphasis was missing. I think this is a way for Bob to bring accountability to coaches and players. One thing that makes Bob great is he trusts his coaches, and he should. When he sees that something looks off then he sits in and brings accountability. I think it is a good move by Stoops.
this is the way I read it as well. He has to trust his staff and, as you said, when something is off then he reasserts himself to recalibrate things. He has a good staff.
I view it just like a company, your executives, or managers, etc. are not going to have their hand in your stuff or be watching you like a hawk all the time. They will monitor you but should show you some trust, if you hit a bump or something is off with production or profits, they are going to get tighter and tighter on you. Stoops is a great “CEO”, he trusts his guys BUT he isn’t above laying the blame on someone if they messed up.
I hope behind closed doors he’s told mike his gameplan at the beginning of the game was lousy. And the same thing to heupel for his 2nd half debacle. Other than that it’s time to get back to work and heupel needs to do some things this year to make up for last years poor RRS performance.
Those guys get after each other and hold each other accountable. I’m sure there was some rated R language thrown at each other after the TCU loss. That’s what has made the Mike and Bob duo so successful. They are hard on each other.
Successful over a decade ago…
What’s up now?
Me: to Bob Stoops “Welcome to the party pal…”
The season started awhile ago. Wish he was serious before.
Stoops has exemplified everything that you want your leader to do: publicly support people who report to him, while having very serious and direct conversations privately.
Absolutely.
A little late but good news.
I thought the TCU game was winnable (i.e., as the game was being played). However, I think the likelihood of winning was much lower given the game plans.
Offense was curious and this was the game plan that most perplexed me:
41 of Neal’s 71 yards were from 1 of his 4 catches.
186 of Shepherd’s 215 yards were from 4 of his 7 catches.
That’s 227 of OU’s 461 total yards (49%) came from 5 plays.
There was really only one long, sustained drive, in the 3rd quarter. That one was almost all rushing. The rest of the scores and drives were largely due to one long play of 35+ yards.
Thus, I would imagine that some of the super cereal nature this week is due to the offensive “WTF are you calling?” game plan.
Subtract the dropped interceptions and just a handful of Knight’s awful throws and we win this one going away.
I really believe he should be with the OC’s and see what the game plan is and if he doesn’t like it make them do it over again. The one thing that puzzles me on offense is the lack of qb rollouts and run plays for Trevor. That is his strength and let his instincts take over. We all know he is smart and he has done a good job until the TCU game. Plus Heupel needs to quit changing plays or let the qb decide that. Trust in the players.
I thought that was why he is paid millions of dollars, to run this business and know what is going on at each level? No good manager wants to be in micro mode but this is not the first time this has happened, not even the second. He knows what kind of talent he has on his team, he should tell all the coordinators this is what we have, this is what we need to do, make it happen and don’t make mistakes you’ve been called out for in the past.
Always felt Bob delegated a little TOO much. He definitely needs to assert control over the offensive game planning sessions and some of the player rotations as well as the disorganization with getting plays in to the team.
I was dumbfounded to see Ross trot out on the field to start the game against TCU when Perine just had the game he had and everybody with a pair of eyes can see light years of difference in talent between Perine and Ross. That level of incompetence floors me and I see things like that all the time.
Ross coming out 1st series floored me too! I was like WHAT! Josh was trying to be tricky, by coming out running with him. Smh
1) 2 weeks to prep and the beginning of the toughest 3 game stretch…………1 game late for the heightened intensity, but better late than never for the big pic………perhaps backs-against-the-wall will get the juices goin’
2) in how many of these meetings has the use of to’s, getting the plays in and sideline confusion come up ya’ think
Not time to move on until the problem is fixed. It obviously isn’t. A new opponent doesn’t mean the problems from the last game have disappeared. More than interested in what will happen if there is another loss due to poor game planning.
Or a really bad offensive game plan where we are lucky to win …… like today.
……..just occurred to me that this board feature is for things that might not be true…………….so, maybe things aren’t serious, bstoops left on a quickie italian vaca and left instructions, “you guys do what you think is best, see ya’ in dallas, ciao!”
Very evident his coordinators need help.
Cud be that he wants to sit in on one or two coaches, and does not want to highlight it. By sitting in them all, no one knows who he’s irked with.
Guessing the texas game play-calling could be further cause for concern for Stoops then. Seems like starting in the 3rd qtr., plays were called by someone not named Josh.
So after today’s performance will Stoops be super serious now? Sorry but I am so sick of these problems. I am starting to see a pattern that lies squarely on the shoulders of the man in charge.
It’s not super serious. Unless he skipped a level.
1- Serious
2- Really serious
3 – Super serious
Well it’s nice to know it worked so wonderfully
Man, I sure am glad Stoops was so serious about things. It really seemed to pay some real dividends for us this weekend.