OKLAHOMA PREVIEW: Blasts from the Past
OKLAHOMA PREVIEW: Blasts from the Past
Sooners' insane offense built around play Tom Osborne made famous; defense prioritizes speed and soundness
Nebraska’s played well the last two weeks, but faces a completely different animal Saturday in longtime rival No. 3 Oklahoma, one of the very best teams in the country. The 2-1 Huskers aren’t holding up their end of the bargain to make this a “Game of the Century” rematch, but there are still a few interesting echoes of history and things to watch when the teams take the field at 11 a.m. CT on Fox. Let’s get started:
OKLAHOMA INFO AND STATISTICS:
COACH: Lincoln Riley, fifth season (47-8)
RECORD: 2-0 (0-0 Big 12)
SP+/F+ OVERALL RATING: 3rd/5th
SP+/F+ OFFENSE RATING: 1st/3rd
SP+/F+ DEFENSE RATING: 14th/36th
SP+ SPECIAL TEAMS RATING: 8th
VEGAS SPREAD (as of Thursday, September 15): Oklahoma -22
SP+ SCORE PREDICTION: Oklahoma 39, Nebraska 22
Riley cut his teeth under or alongside the Air Raid masters: As a player, he walked on at Mike Leach’s Texas Tech for one year and backed up Kliff Kingsbury, before he moved to a student coaching role that overlapped on staff with Dana Holgersen (Houston), Sonny Dykes (SMU), Art Briles (Baylor/bad person), and Bill Bedenbaugh (OU offensive line coach and co-offensive coordinator). Riley was on the Tech staff for 7 years before becoming offensive coordinator at East Carolina. After Riley obliterated the record books for the Pirates, former OU coach Bob Stoops brought Riley to Oklahoma as offensive coordinator in 2015, seeking to get back to the purer Air Raid scheme that Stoops used early in his OU tenure after a few buff seasons for the Sooners’ offense. After a very successful two-year stint as OC, Riley ascended to the head job after Stoops’ unexpected retirement in June before the 2017 season. All he’s done since then is win 85 percent of his games, sweep all four Big 12 titles, and make a playoff appearance as the youngest head coaching hire in the FBS.
PERSONNEL:
BEST PLAYERS:
Spencer Rattler, quarterback, #7: The presumptive No. 1 pick in next spring’s draft, the ball comes out of this man’s hand like a ninja throwing star. Not as much of a threat to run as the last few OU QBs, but just as creative out of structure and has a lightning-quick release.
Perrion Winfrey, nose guard, #8: Winfrey, the No. 1 JUCO recruit in the 2020 class who chose OU over Alabama, LSU, and Texas, is giant and fast; a true freak. Six of his 19 tackles last year in a reserve role were for a loss, and he had six pass deflections. Many in the Sooner program think he’s primed to be a first-round NFL draft pick. He’s a nose tackle who can win one-on-one and get penetration, and considering that Nebraska’s offensive line (outside of Cameron Jurgens) has resembled a set of traffic cones in pass protection this year, he’s probably going to have a big game.
Nik Bonitto, edge defender, #11: The redshirt junior has steadily improved each year. He was the highest-graded pass rusher in the country last year and is currently PFF’s No. 1-ranked overall edge player. He was the Big 12’s preseason defensive player of the year for a reason.
Marvin Mims, wide receiver, #17: Mims was fourth on the Sooners in targets last year as a true freshman but led the team in receptions and yards. Able to win both down the field as a traditional receiver and on the behind-the-line plays as a demon after the catch, he’s probably on his way to challenging CeeDee Lamb as the most well-rounded receiver of the Riley era.
COOLEST NAME ON THE ROSTER:
Finley Felix, Offensive Lineman
The redshirt senior reserve offensive lineman has only played in a handful of games for the Sooners since transferring from Coffeyville (Kan.) Community College, but the alliteration drip in his name is undefeated.
WHEN OU’S OFFENSE IS ON THE FIELD:
STATISTICS:
Yards Per Play (national rank in parentheses):
OU OFFENSE: 6.98 (18th)
NU DEFENSE: 4.70 allowed (55th)
Points Per Drive (national ranks for 2021 not currently available; where each would rank nationally in 2020 final standings in parentheses):
OU OFFENSE: 4.64 (1st)
NU DEFENSE: 0.85 allowed (1st)
20+ Yard Gains Per Game:
OU OFFENSE: 7.0 (5 rush, 9 pass)
NU DEFENSE: 3.66 allowed (1.66 rush, 2 pass)
Havoc Plays Per Game (tackles for loss, sacks, QB pressures, passes defensed, interceptions, fumbles forced):
OU OFFENSE: 6.0 allowed
NU DEFENSE: 11.33 Per Game
COORDINATOR:
Riley, 5th Season
Riley, a combo head coach/offensive playcaller, may have learned from the Air Raid masters as a young Padawan, but since taking over the OU Death Star, he’s created a deadly combination of the small-ball Air Raid principles and the more traditional Big Boy football plays you can run at an elite recruiting school. His offenses have finished 11th, 1st, 1st, 1st, 1st, 3rd and 3rd nationally in offensive SP+ since his arrival in Norman, and he’s had four quarterbacks finish as Heisman finalists in five seasons. Maybe not a better offensive mind in all of big-time football right now.
SCHEME
Multiple - Uptempo
OU operates almost exclusively out of the shotgun and utilizes lots of traditional Air Raid and spread concepts, but Riley has also folded in a lot of traditional gap run schemes to the offense.
The biggest of these is counter trey. The Sooners ran counter or a play action or RPO off of it on 30 percent of their plays last year, the highest in the country.
Counter trey is a pretty basic power misdirection play: Two backside blockers pull across the center while the playside linemen get a double team on the playside defensive tackle. Sometimes the ball carrier gives an initial fake step to the non-play side before following the pullers playside. The jab step in the opposite direction by the ball carrier hopefully makes the linebackers flow the wrong way, creating better angles and easier seals for the linemen.
In a weird bit of symmetry before the Game of the Century, the person credited with inventing the modern counter trey play the Sooners are running to devastating effect is … Tom Osborne. Joe Gibbs’ Washington professional teams of the 1980s made the play famous, but Gibbs later copped to stealing it from watching ‘80s Nebraska film. Here are a couple pages from Osborne’s playbook showing it out of the I and also an extremely prescient QB run variation out of the shotgun that OU ran all the time when it had Jalen Hurts at QB:
Back in 2021, the Sooners run two primary variations of counter trey:
GF Counter
GT Counter:
GF Counter pulls the guard and an H-back or tight end across the formation, while GT Counter pulls the guard and tackle. OU’s backs are a little lackadaisical with the jab step in both of these clips, and that may be a coaching point as the timing can sometimes work better without the step, but if you see the two pullers across the formation, know you’re seeing a counter trey.
And then when your linebackers adjust and start flowing with the pulling linemen, OU will hit you with its play action and RPO game off of counter trey.
In the general passing game, OU threw off play action at the 8th highest rate in the country, and was top 30 in deep pass percentage. It also ran traditional Air Raid concepts like mesh and Y Cross at a pretty high rate. The Sooners will operate at a breakneck tempo if you let them, and Riley also loves a good trick play, so expect one of those:
HOW NEBRASKA CAN DEFEND IT:
Teams like Matt Rhule’s Baylor and Iowa State have given OU’s counter game brief fits by running odd or tight fronts, putting three defensive linemen inside the B gap to make the playside double team harder and forcing offensive linemen to quickly climb to the second level, allowing linebackers to penetrate before the play gets going. Run blitzing is also a good strategy, but then you open yourself up to big passing plays; Rattler was the highest-rated QB in the country against pressure last year. Rattler has also been known to hunt big plays, and put the ball in harms way, so maybe NU can force an interception or two.
But if we’re all being honest, no one has really stopped OU for long since Riley got there. Even with as well as the Blackshirts are playing, the goal here is to hold them to 28 or 31 points instead of 50.
WHEN OU’S DEFENSE IS ON THE FIELD:
STATISTICS:
Yards Per Play (national rank in parentheses):
OU DEFENSE: 4.10 allowed (20th)
NU OFFENSE: 6.79 (29th)
Points Per Drive (national ranks for 2021 not currently available; where each would rank nationally in 2020 final standings in parentheses):
OU DEFENSE: 1.35 allowed (6th)
NU OFFENSE: 2.92 (21st)
Havoc Plays Per Game (cumulative tackles for loss, sacks, QB pressures, passes defensed, interceptions, fumbles forced):
OU DEFENSE: 15.5
NU OFFENSE: 6.0 allowed
20+ Yard Gains Per Game:
OU DEFENSE: 2.0 allowed (0 rush, 2 pass)
NU OFFENSE: 6.33 (1.66 rush, 4.66 pass)
COORDINATOR:
Alex Grinch, 3rd Season
Grinch was hired by Riley before the 2019 season, replacing Mike Stoops (and interim coordinator Ruffin McNeill) after the 2018 Sooners’ defense finished 84th in defensive SP+. The 41-year-old got his start under his uncle Gary Pinkel at Missouri in the early 2000s, but he became a big coaching name after turning Washington State’s defense under Leach from abysmal into a havoc-causing buzzsaw from 2015-17. Grinch spent a year as a non-playcalling defensive assistant at Ohio State for a year before coming to Norman, and he didn’t get off to the hottest start with OU, memorably giving up 63 points in getting torched by Joe Burrow in a College Football Playoff semifinal. But by the end of last season he had the unit playing at a high level.
SCHEME:
3-4 Base - Even front
Grinch plays for turnovers and chaos. But he doesn’t want do anything particularly wild or crazy schematically to get them, instead prioritizing simple, easily communicated look; an aggressive culture; sound, disciplined play; … and as much speed as possible. Here’s his philosophy from a 2016 interview with ESPN:
“Takeaways equal victories,” said Grinch. “It’s the only reason we’re out there, to get the ball back for the offense. A lot of people don’t think like that. They look at it more that you’re trying to limit yards. But you’re there on defense for one reason, to get the ball back. … We’re trying to brainwash our guys into believing that, so every single practice we’re stripping at it, grabbing at it and trying to knock it loose. … You’re looking for the kids with size and speed potential. But if you can’t run, you can’t play in our system. There’s not one kid who doesn’t play for us because he’s too small. The ones who don’t play are the ones who can’t run.”
His love of athleticism and simple schemes fits well with the Sooners’ roster. They use a 3-4 base personnel but always use an even front on standard downs by walking one of the outside linebackers down as a rusher, usually Bonnito. They run Cover 2 at a higher rate than most, but didn’t really favor any particular coverage, running man and zone concepts at almost a dead-even rate.
Grinch also chases sacks and tackles for loss, but the Sooners blitzed at the 100th highest rate in the country last year. He much prefers to rush four, letting OU’s freak pass rushers win one-on-one and keeping the secondary and gap control sound over exotic blitzes. Don’t expect a bunch of creative pressures or weird calls. Leach said it best of Grinch’s overall philosophy when he turned around Washington State’s defense: “He simplified a bunch of muck and bullshit that needed to be gotten rid of.”
One thing he will do quite a bit is bring late motion at an offense after it has set or called an audible out of a “check with me” tempo. Here Tulane call a midline play, traditionally a great concept to run against a four-man front. But right before the snap, OU slides to one side and brings a linebacker on a run blitz, creating a five-man odd front and gumming up the play.
(SIDEBAR: I’m using so many Tulane .gifs so that we can all appreciate these incredible Green Wave uniforms — the best in the country).
On third downs, Grinch likes to use sim pressure to make the offense think a blitz is coming before only bringing four and dropping unexpected players out into coverage, so look for that.
HOW NEBRASKA CAN ATTACK IT:
An aggressive defense can be had by getting them to overcommit and run themselves out of position. Tulane, which scored 35 points on OU in Week 1 in a near upset, had a ton of success in both the run and pass games by using misdirection:
Expect a higher rate of presnap motion from NU than they already run. I also expect Nebraska to use a lot of triple option looks to negate some of the Sooners’ athleticism advantages — if you can’t beat them, read them. I also expect a lot of midline option, a play where the offense reads an interior defensive lineman, usually the 3 technique — Tulane runs midline in the first .gif of the defensive breakdown if you’d like an example — because there’s no way they’re blocking Winfrey. The Sooners’ coverage distribution is so balanced, it’s tough to know what they’re going to do and what passing concepts the Huskers will attack it with. Their secondary is probably the weakness of their team though, and can be had — hopefully any of Nebraska’s starting receivers or tight ends are healthy.
SCORE PREDICTION:
31-17, Oklahoma
I might regret this tremendously, but I’m a lot less worried about NU’s defense in this game than I am NU’s offense. The Sooners will get their points as they always do, but I think, with a good secondary and a big, strong defensive line, the Blackshirts are pretty well built to at least keep OU from dropping a 50-burger.
The offense is much more concerning. NU’s offensive line has been atrocious in pass pro all season and is now facing one of the best and most athletic pass rushing fronts in the country. Buffalo ate alive NU’s front and Nebraska was able to score points by having Adrian Martinez go full ‘07 Madden Michael Vick, but that’s going to be a lot harder to do against OU’s athletes. I expect Martinez to have about .01 seconds to throw this game. And this is completely ignoring the Huskers god-awful special teams, which are currently costing NU about 14 points a game. Still, GBR.
Love the connection to Tom Osborne with the the counter trey. It does feel like OU drops a game each year and has a couple of close scares each year against teams that are disciplined defensively, but play an efficient offense in the game against OU (Iowa State, Kansas State). It feels like Nebraska could do that, but I’m thinking it’s a close game until about midway through the 3rd.