By Clay Horning
Here’s an idea.
Just throw it.
Throw it short, throw it long and throw it medium. Throw it wide, dump it off, throw a screen. Throw it till the cows come home. Throw it till the first of Octember. Throw it until it makes you sick. Then throw it some more.
Throw it until, well … throw it until you can pick 4 yards any other way.
See, football’s not so tough.
It’s really very simple.
Is there a better throwing quarterback in the college game than Sam Bradford? Is there a better group of receivers than Manny Johnson, Juaquin Iglesias, Ryan Broyles and Jermaine Gresham? If so, not many on either count.
So why not do more of what you do best.
It’s a simplistic view, but one Oklahoma should consider.
Unaware (because he was answering a question on the difference between running with the quarterback under center and running out of the shotgun), Bob Stoops actually made the case for abandoning the run Tuesday.
“The bottom line is, when you’re up there with six blockers and they have seven defenders, they’ve got you outnumbered no matter what formation you’re in,” he said. “And basic football says, if they have you outnumbered, then you throw the football. And we’ve been highly effective throwing the football.”
So why not do it every snap.
Until you quit getting outnumbered.
There Stoops was, sort of defending his running game, because so much of the time the Sooners were trying to establish it against clear imbalance. Well, that may mitigate the personnel in question, but it indicts the decision to run in the first place.
Yes, it’s hard to accuse a team of running too much when of its 67 plays from scrimmage, 41 were passes and three more were supposed to be passes but were sacks instead. On the other hand, if it’s not working at all, it’s not, you know, working at all.
Unclear is exactly where offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson stands on the issue.
He admits there’s a balancing act between choosing to run the ball simply in the name of running the ball and accepting one-dimensionality as the right course as long as you struggle to run the ball while outnumbered at the point of attack.
He said he’s gone to offensive line coach James Patton and told him to come up with a few plays the offensive line knows it can block, like addition through subtraction when what’s subtracted are items off a too-vast buffet.
At the same time, the offense has already embraced the idea of a balance between passing plays, rather than ground and air.
“Some of those underneath screens have kind of become some of our runs,” he said. “Because that ball is being caught at the line of scrimmage.”
Those are the plays Johnson drifts into the middle, catches the ball, then appears shot out of blocks, Usain Bolt style.
Who knows what OU will do?
Whatever, it’s not about becoming Texas Tech.
If jammed at the line of scrimmage, why not go deep every time with the best deep passer in the country? Or throw it again and again to the best pass-catching tight end in the country? Or go back to the well with that nifty fake reverse pass DeMarco Murray caught for 34 yards against the Longhorns.
Just as soon as the defense backs off, then run the ball.
It’s a course the Sooners shouldn’t have to take. Not with an offensive line like this and so many backs to choose from. But if they can’t run, they can’t run.
But they sure can pass.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
