The Football Brainiacs

Since the clock ran out on Texas Tech, we’ve had twelve days to prepare for what most agreed to be the biggest game of the year in the Big XII.  We had a national stage, eyes of countless recruits and a chance to make a bold statement that in spite of what everyone else thought, we knew we weren’t the two touchdown dogs that all of the oddsmakers believed us to be.  We knew we needed turn this game into an old fashioned street fight…or did we?

After watching the Texas Tech game two weeks ago, I hoped that as a staff we had finally figured out who we were.  22 passes and 50 runs.  Most of the success we had in that game was from a double tight formation, or double tight with a wing.  Even when Trey Millard got hurt late in the game last week I still had hope that we would employ a similar scheme this week, because Brannon Green stepped in and played pretty well against the Red Raiders.  After the first play from scrimmage offensively tonight I knew that as an offensive staff we had panicked.  We come out in 10 personnel(1 running back, zero tight ends).  Trey Millard goes down and all is lost.  While Trey is an outstanding player and a better young man, Rip is no slouch at FB, and Green has played well when he got the opportunity.  So with all that, when I saw that we were coming out with no tight ends on the first play, and then running a reverse on top of that, I just shook my head. Immediately we were behind the chains,  and it was too much to overcome.  Even if that trick play had worked, even if we had gotten a gain of six why would you want to do that?  Why wouldn’t you come out, drive a stake in the ground and say this is who we are.  This is what we are going to do.

At this point in the season, anyone who has watched this Sooner team for more than 10 minutes knows that we don’t have Landry Jones or Sam Bradford back there slinging it around.  We don’t have a guy whose strengths are slinging it around 50 times a game.  We have a team that has a wealth of talent at the qb position running the ball, and an embarrassment of riches at running back.  I got excited when I saw Trevor get in the game and run the zone read.  You could tell that Baylor wasn’t ready for it.  But we didn’t stick with it. Adversely, Baylor knew who they were, had a plan and stuck with it.  You could tell that they decided that they were going to load the box, blitz us from every angle, and make Blake Bell beat them. They knew that they were going to line up, hit Blake and force him to make quick decisions.  How do you counter that? Wherever an opponent masses force, you must do the same. If they have numbers in the box, then you too must have numbers in the box.  The beauty of football is that there is an odd number of players on the field.  Even if you are completely balanced offensively with the qb in the middle, the defense can only have five players to the left or right and six on the other.  Somewhere you’re going to have a numbers advantage.  If opponents are attacking your flanks with blitzers and extra players, you negate that by keeping people in and blocking them.   When you have a running qb, then you have a further numbers advantage because instead of handing the ball to someone and losing the qb in the numbers game, that back now becomes a blocker for your qb.

Earlier this year we failed to attack Texas where they had shown they were weakest, and tonight we did the same thing.  BYU and Iowa State wore Texas out with the qb run game.  What do we do?  Call up Joe Tiller and go basketball on grass.  Last night it was much of the same.  When we did have success with it, it almost felt like Huepel was relieved that he could get back to calling what he was comfortable calling.  It’s so confusing to me that it’s hard to describe.

The absolute biggest mistake that I see these offensive coaches making is trying to get Blake Bell to be who he is not.  The most effective leaders recognize what their people do well and then formulate their strategy to emphasize the strengths of their team.  Blake does really well with one or two guys in the pattern out of the big sets where the pattern is not cluttered.  Against this Baylor team we failed to adjust to the fact that they were going to sell out and blitz us.  We failed to keep in any extra people to offset that in pass protection, and we failed to line up in power sets consistently.  Instead of lining up in those big sets and forcing their defenders to honor those gaps in alignment, we made it easy for them by going into the open sets.  Open sets give defensive coordinators a choice.  They can choose to single cover outside receivers or double them.  Then if you do single cover them, you can use those extra players you have defensively to blitz.  When you don’t have a qb who can beat your blitz, you’re going to win defensively.  You don’t have those choices against power sets, because you have to line up where the offense puts players.  You can’t blitz as much because your players now have run responsibilities instead of being allowed to roam free and pressure. All of this sounds complicated, but it really is very simple.