The Football Brainiacs

Image via Riley Twitter

So some of you may read the title and think, “pump your breaks there K. It’s one game.” Allow me to explain why I think the Sooners are on the verge of a new dynasty.

The only time that Coach Stoops was ever on the “hot seat,” if you can call it that, was the period before Josh Heupel left. Up until those late years, OU always had a quarterback and, in the very rare case they didn’t have a quarterback, they had a damn good defense in a time when your defense could win for you.

Your defense alone can’t win for you anymore. You have to have a quarterback. You insert Baker Mayfield and suddenly Bob Stoops is back to winning the Big 12 championships and even made it to the playoffs. So that takes me to point number one in Riley’s favor.

– Lincoln Riley will always have a quarterback. He’s already working to get his next quarterback plenty of reps. He even got his walk-on QB reps in a game. As long as the Sooners have a QB, they’ll be competitive. Riley is a master QB developer.

Bob was/is a great coach. After Bob retired, I remember asking someone close to him what made Stoops such a great coach to which this person said, “He never strayed from his message and he trusted his coaches. He let his coaches coach and his players play. He stuck to what he believed in, which may have made him slow to react at times but it also made him steady.”

– Lincoln is a nice guy but, as I mentioned earlier in the summer, everyone was put on notice that the level of accountability for the staff was only going to increase. As I mentioned over the summer, the S&C staff was one of the first groups to receive the message. Something that happened in the Ohio State game that was really good to see, and only reinforced my belief that Riley is going to have the same hard-nosed attitude Bob did, was when Abdul fumbled the ball. Riley gets a lot of players on the field and he will give you your chance but, like Bob Stoops, you better not fumble the ball. This is Oklahoma. 

When you think of a Bob Stoops team, you think of a team that is going to work extremely hard and will be prepared. Part of being prepared is being held accountable, but how can you be held accountable without real depth behind you? This is where Lincoln is showing pretty early on he’s going to excel.

– Lincoln Riley is going to enhance the personnel. We’ve already talked about giving more players more opportunities. That breeds more team attitude in the locker room. That means more competition, which creates more accountability. But Lincoln will also advance OU’s recruiting efforts. DaShaun White commits to TAMU…no problem. Lincoln Riley continues to personally recruit the young man and, only three weeks into the season, White is headed to Oklahoma for a visit this weekend. Riley is a genuine guy who is willing to recruit, but imagine how easy it is to sell your message when the proof is on the field. “You come here and work hard, whether you are a scholarship player or a walk-on, you’ll have a chance,” and then he pulls up the tape of Lee Morris catching a touchdown in one of the biggest games of the year. “Come here and prove you’re ready and you’ll play early,” then he pulls up film of CeeDee Lamb and Kenneth Murray

For the most part, Bob always had an offensive identity. He wanted to run the ball within a spread system. Sometimes he was more air-raid, sometimes he was more balanced. But where Bob struggled a bit towards the end of his time was his identity on the defensive side of the ball. He came to OU with a very clear defensive identity but, with the proliferation of the spread sets, the Tampa 2 as a foundational coverage became obsolete. And towards the end of his tenure, OU really wasn’t a pressure team, zone blitz or otherwise. Though Bob remained fairly steady with an offensive identity, he wasn’t an offensive coach.

– Riley has an offensive identity and he is an offensive coach. One of the things I’ve noted is Riley’s dedication to the run and his dedication to his h-back and his flex TE. Riley’s true identity, though, is creativity. He’s just smarter than the other coaches. He’s like Bruce Lee out there. In fact, there was a play during the Ohio State game where he has Flowers slip inside the OT; not something standard. So the linebacker in man coverage just lets him go, probably because he’s never seen that before. Seems simple enough, but Riley is a guy willing to break the mold. That’s his identity. He’s true to himself as a player caller and as a person. It’s difficult to say what Riley’s defensive identity will be, but, as a brilliant offensive coach, he’ll figure out what defense he doesn’t want to see and that will be the right identity.