OU 2013 Offense & Defense

[Teo9969]

What will make the O-Line better is firing James Patton and abandoning the zone blocking scheme.

[Teo9969]

What will make the D-Line better is having a DT that demands a double team. We saw how the 2 fantastic defensive ends (Frank and Ronnell) with average interior linemen project worked out...

[Camel at Sea]

I'll give you the receivers, but these past couple of years should have taught you that a recruits rankings are irrelevant once they are here. I will wait until I see Alex Ross and Keith Ford in games before I say we are loaded with RB talent

That's fair. But I'm still pretty high on Mr. Millard and Damien Williams, too, when he's healthy.

[Soonerlife]

Offense-I've said this for quite some time now it's all about mentality. Not being 300+. Right now the OL is there to protect the QB. Their first motion is backwards, in a protection/defensive mode. They usually do a pretty good job of this actually. When you run block, you attack the opposition, ie an offensive motion. It's not easy to balance the two. Many on here cussed Wilson and much of it was deserved, however if anybody listened to the Brown interview he praised Wilson. What I really liked about Wilson is usually our first drive of the second half (we almost always got the ball first in the second half) it was run run run. He was letting his OL eat. The best way to reward an OL is let them run block. I would say almost all of the OL at one point in time in their playing career played both offense and defense. At the core of their passion for the game is the ability to knock the **** out of somebody. That's what drew me to the game. When you let them run block, they can maul the ****er in front of them. Nothing makes a OL happier than mauling his opponent and watching his RB run down the field.

JH-I'm not a fan of JH, didn't like him getting the OC in the first place. I just didn't like the idea of an OC busting his cherry at OU. I thought he should have went to Indiana with Wilson, developed his own offensive philosophy. He is an ex QB. One thing about an OC that is an ex QB, they believe they can p**** their way out of anything. I don't like him being in the booth. When you are in the booth you are insulated, you are just a voice on a headset. You don't have the ability to look your players in the eye, see the defenders, pick out which one is scared/confused/gassed, and attack him. You are unable to feed off the emotion of the game. You can't see when an OL is ready to just knock the **** out of his guy. That is one thing I loved about Mangino. He was on the sidelines, could get in guys face, size them up and read what was going on with them.

No Huddle- REALLY not a fan of the no huddle. I like it in certain situations, and we do run it well. However, when the offense is on the goal line, or it's 4th and short, I like my QB to be in that huddle. That is where the QB truly leads. That is where he motivates, where he brings guys up when they need it. The rule has always been, nobody talks in the huddle but the QB. I think when you don't let them huddle, you cut the legs out from the QB. It's a simple thing, the huddle some think it's overrated and not needed. But when it's tight and you huddle up, that QB takes control. He calms them down when needed. The most unemotional guy on the sidelines is many times the most emotional, motivating, calming guy in the huddle. He can call out his lineman, wr, rb and it not happen on the sidelines for the world to see.

DEFENSE-Like people have said it's about talent. But it's not quite that simple. You recruit the talent to fit the scheme you run to win your conference. They don't recruit to beat Bama, or USC, or Ohio State. They recruit to beat tex****, osu, wvu, tcu, baylor. This the Big 12, we all know the offenses that are ran here. We all know the type of defenses you need to run to compete in this league. We see the Bama offense or defense, or some of the other teams around the country and say, we couldn't stop them. Well truth is if we don't stop the teams in OUR league, it doesn't matter if we can stop those other guys. For instance, when I was in school we ran a very basic 5-2. Why? Because practically everybody in the league ran some form of option or were heavy run based. Very few threw the ball. So we did pretty well against the run and got lit up by a passing team. Why did that happen? We recruited the talent to win our Conference. Same goes here, we did pretty decent against the p**** all year. The run game killed us.

Basically there isn't a simple solution. You can't fire this coach or that coach and think that will just fix everything. College football is cyclical, anybody that has watched for a length of time knows this. Ebbs and flows, think about it. In the 90's Nebraska was this years Bama. Hell just look how much college football has changed in offensive philosophies. Defenses will always play catch up to the offenses. Simple defense is reactionary. Hell just look at how much the offense has changed under Stoops. We don't run the same offense now that we ran back then. We adapted, changes some things up. Maybe it's time to adapt and change it up again.

Anyway that's what I think

[byrk75]

Offense-I've said this for quite some time now it's all about mentality. Not being 300+. Right now the OL is there to protect the QB. Their first motion is backwards, in a protection/defensive mode. They usually do a pretty good job of this actually. When you run block, you attack the opposition, ie an offensive motion. It's not easy to balance the two. Many on here cussed Wilson and much of it was deserved, however if anybody listened to the Brown interview he praised Wilson. What I really liked about Wilson is usually our first drive of the second half (we almost always got the ball first in the second half) it was run run run. He was letting his OL eat. The best way to reward an OL is let them run block. I would say almost all of the OL at one point in time in their playing career played both offense and defense. At the core of their passion for the game is the ability to knock the **** out of somebody. That's what drew me to the game. When you let them run block, they can maul the ****er in front of them. Nothing makes a OL happier than mauling his opponent and watching his RB run down the field.

JH-I'm not a fan of JH, didn't like him getting the OC in the first place. I just didn't like the idea of an OC busting his cherry at OU. I thought he should have went to Indiana with Wilson, developed his own offensive philosophy. He is an ex QB. One thing about an OC that is an ex QB, they believe they can p**** their way out of anything. I don't like him being in the booth. When you are in the booth you are insulated, you are just a voice on a headset. You don't have the ability to look your players in the eye, see the defenders, pick out which one is scared/confused/gassed, and attack him. You are unable to feed off the emotion of the game. You can't see when an OL is ready to just knock the **** out of his guy. That is one thing I loved about Mangino. He was on the sidelines, could get in guys face, size them up and read what was going on with them.

No Huddle- REALLY not a fan of the no huddle. I like it in certain situations, and we do run it well. However, when the offense is on the goal line, or it's 4th and short, I like my QB to be in that huddle. That is where the QB truly leads. That is where he motivates, where he brings guys up when they need it. The rule has always been, nobody talks in the huddle but the QB. I think when you don't let them huddle, you cut the legs out from the QB. It's a simple thing, the huddle some think it's overrated and not needed. But when it's tight and you huddle up, that QB takes control. He calms them down when needed. The most unemotional guy on the sidelines is many times the most emotional, motivating, calming guy in the huddle. He can call out his lineman, wr, rb and it not happen on the sidelines for the world to see.

DEFENSE-Like people have said it's about talent. But it's not quite that simple. You recruit the talent to fit the scheme you run to win your conference. They don't recruit to beat Bama, or USC, or Ohio State. They recruit to beat tex****, osu, wvu, tcu, baylor. This the Big 12, we all know the offenses that are ran here. We all know the type of defenses you need to run to compete in this league. We see the Bama offense or defense, or some of the other teams around the country and say, we couldn't stop them. Well truth is if we don't stop the teams in OUR league, it doesn't matter if we can stop those other guys. For instance, when I was in school we ran a very basic 5-2. Why? Because practically everybody in the league ran some form of option or were heavy run based. Very few threw the ball. So we did pretty well against the run and got lit up by a passing team. Why did that happen? We recruited the talent to win our Conference. Same goes here, we did pretty decent against the p**** all year. The run game killed us.

Basically there isn't a simple solution. You can't fire this coach or that coach and think that will just fix everything. College football is cyclical, anybody that has watched for a length of time knows this. Ebbs and flows, think about it. In the 90's Nebraska was this years Bama. Hell just look how much college football has changed in offensive philosophies. Defenses will always play catch up to the offenses. Simple defense is reactionary. Hell just look at how much the offense has changed under Stoops. We don't run the same offense now that we ran back then. We adapted, changes some things up. Maybe it's time to adapt and change it up again.

Anyway that's what I think

:thumbup: this is a great post!

[KCRuf/Nek]

What will make our ol better is getting a quality dl to go against every day.

Not to mention a defense that can get off the field. We can talk about the offense all we want but we can't keep hoping we win games 50-49.

When OU had an able TE, like Gresham, the hurry up was deadly because defenses couldn't substitute based on what package was on the field. Hopefully McNamara can step up and make it happen after his shoulder heals up.

what made that offense so good was that we could run either type of attack with the same 11 players. We could line up and power the ball or we could go 4-5 wide. Our linemen all lost about 15 pounds and the team was in great shape. That year was truly the fast break offense - not lining up and taking the whole play clock to get going again. And besides Sam and an NFL stocked OL we had Murray who we're still trying to replace. Of all those guys we had he was the one I hated to see go.

[lobster999]

Damn good post soonerlife. I agree with a bunch of what you said. We need way more posts like this from you. I would argue you that the catalyst for the ebb and flows of teams has usually been coaching staff changes.

[S11-Baylor]

What will make the O-Line better is firing James Patton and abandoning the zone blocking scheme.

Zone isn't the problem. Teams like Oregon, Baylor, Bama, and others use it to great success. USC's Pete Carroll era offenses owned defenses with it. Don't know much about Patton as an outsider though.

[OUInformant]

Listen, our offense was pretty good this year, and very comparable to Bama's in terms of talent. We just do something completely different. I think our OLine was generally pretty good for what we like to do, especially considering the large number of injuries we sustained (even before the season started). We throw all the time, and so that's what our line was good at, i.e., p**** blocking. The big difference between us and Bama, talent-wise, is on defense. Now, our secondary was really pretty good. But our Front 7 was relatively weak. We simply need to get stronger there if we want to compete with the upper-echelon of the SEC.

Now, though I think we have comparable talent on offense, I see a great need to drastically change what we're doing. I like Bama's offense. I think we need to emulate it to some degree. We need to focus on running the ball and passing via play action. I think this will be a big change that will make us a much more physical team. The OL will adapt and will be better at run blocking. Very rarely, if ever, have I seen a line that p**** and run blocks equally well. It's all in what you focus on. Against good defenses, ball control and field position mean everything. Our offense is designed to beat up on weaker teams, not to control the best defenses. Hence, we have issues winning games against top competition.

[Soonerlife]

Listen, our offense was pretty good this year, and very comparable to Bama's in terms of talent. We just do something completely different. I think our OLine was generally pretty good for what we like to do, especially considering the large number of injuries we sustained (even before the season started). We throw all the time, and so that's what our line was good at, i.e., p**** blocking. The big difference between us and Bama, talent-wise, is on defense. Now, our secondary was really pretty good. But our Front 7 was relatively weak. We simply need to get stronger there if we want to compete with the upper-echelon of the SEC.

Now, though I think we have comparable talent on offense, I see a great need to drastically change what we're doing. I like Bama's offense. I think we need to emulate it to some degree. We need to focus on running the ball and passing via play action. I think this will be a big change that will make us a much more physical team. The OL will adapt and will be better at run blocking. Very rarely, if ever, have I seen a line that p**** and run blocks equally well. It's all in what you focus on. Against good defenses, ball control and field position mean everything. Our offense is designed to beat up on weaker teams, not to control the best defenses. Hence, we have issues winning games against top competition.

If you want to change the offensive philosophy then you must also be prepared to take 2-3 years to recruit the players to operate this change.