Oklahoma Assistants Adjusting to New Offensive Terminology Under Jeff Lebby

Lebby steps in as the new Sooners’ offensive coordinator after spending the previous two seasons at Ole Miss.

As Oklahoma football enters a new era under Brent Venables, Sooners players and coaches are taking advantage of every day they get to make the transition into 2022 as seamless as possible.

While excitement both within and outside the program seems to be as high as ever, the challenge of installing new offensive and defensive systems in the same offseason is certainly a daunting one.

Offensively, Oklahoma retained many key faces from the previous regime under Lincoln Riley — something that certainly helps provide at least some level of continuity for the players, who have encountered endless change over the last few months.

But, while the Sooners do have many of the same offensive coaches, the offensive coordinator has changed hands with Jeff Lebby returning to his alma mater after spending the previous two seasons with Ole Miss.

This means a big change for not just the players, but the coaches as well as they adjust out of Riley’s system and into Lebby’s.

The biggest area of adjustment? The terminology.

Every coach and system have their own terms and ways for calling certain plays, creating a difficult offseason for the Sooners’ offensive assistants to learn the different verbiage as quickly as possible.

“Yeah, terminology is the radical change,” offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh said. “That's it. Play calls are gonna be — some of our terms in the O-line blocking schemes, we'll keep. We'll keep some of what they did, but play calls will be all totally new.

“But it's just correlating the calls until they really understand the calls — what we're calling this play is what we called it (under Riley). That's how I'm learning it. That's just how it works in my mind and that's how I'm trying to teach it to them. There are very, very few plays — maybe one or two — that (Lebby) has run that we haven't run. Obviously, we'll see when spring ball starts, but it's been good up to this point.”

Bill Bedenbaugh :: John E. Hoover / SI Sooners

Riley came to Oklahoma as the offensive coordinator in 2015 and continued to run the offense himself after moving to head coach. Meaning, for the past six seasons everything has been referred to as one way — and now it is all changing.

It doesn’t take a football savant to see why that could be a difficult thing to master in a short period of time as spring football rapidly approaches.

“I think I would have a better chance of learning Portuguese, honestly,” assistant head coach/wide receivers coach Cale Gundy said. “When I tell you that we’ve been working and we’ve been grinding, we have. It’s a completely new offense. You see it on TV and you kind of got an idea of some things, but it is learning. It’s a strain. We’re all straining right now. We’re straining as coaches. Our players are straining. Our players are straining every morning in workouts and speed school and coach stations. They’re straining in their classes and doing the right thing and getting things done and, oh by the way, you’re learning a completely new offense and defense. It’s definitely been a month of a lot of grind and a lot of strain. I tell people I get up here about 6 or 6:30 (a.m.) and before I know it, I’m sitting at my desk and it’s 7-ish (p.m.). I think I probably needed to go home. We’re having lunch and we’re eating in our offices during lunch. We’re working right through it.”

A strategy to learning the new terminology quickly comes in perhaps simplifying what it is they are actually trying to accomplish.

As Bedenbaugh noted, they aren’t learning an entirely new playbook. Just the verbiage. Recognizing that reality can certainly help the task seem less daunting and more manageable.

“It’s football, you learn everybody runs the same plays,” tight ends coach Joe Jon Finely said. “There’s going to be details that people do differently. But everybody's going to run power, everybody’s going to run counter, everybody’s going to run inside zone, outside zone. And so, what are we calling it and what are the differences in, OK, we make this call when they do this, instead of, hey, sometimes we used to make that call. Just being able to translate that between Lebby and the guys that we have on offense. Then even our players. That’s where the tight ends have a little bit of advantage. Like I said, this is so and so from last year. That’s where they can correlate it really fast, and I try to help those other coaches, where they can correlate it for their guys as well.”

Joe Jon Finley :: John E. Hoover / SI Sooners

Perhaps the larger part of the overall task of learning the new terminology for the coaches is the fact that they in turn have to find a way to regurgitate the information to the players in their respective position rooms.

This puts an even larger emphasis on the assistants learning what they need to learn, and doing it fast.

“Well, that's what my job is,” Bedenbaugh said. “You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I know it. But again, that's what I'm saying. I don't wanna go through the play calls, but you correlate, alright, this is split zone. This is split cut zone. This is split read zone. This is counter. This is power. This is power read. This is outside zone. This is lead outside zone. We ran all those plays. And again, like I said, that's how I correlate it in my mind. This is what they call split zone read. This is what they call 10 personnel zone. I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but that's how I correlate it in my mind. “

While the spring camp will likely experience growing pains on both sides of the ball as the players and coaches undergo the transition into something completely new for many, it is clear that the excitement level is the driving force pushing things forward.

A shift as large as what Oklahoma football is undergoing right now doesn’t really work without everyone bought in, which doesn’t sound like  a problem for the Sooners.

Many OU assistants pointed to players contacting them through all hours of the day, even late at night, with questions about certain schemes or plays.

The move from the Lincoln Riley offense and Alex Grinch defense to the Jeff Lebby offense and Brent Venables defense is an arduous one, but also one that brings great anticipation for the years ahead.

“You guys know I’ve been here a very long time,” Gundy said. “I’ve never been so excited about OU football and what we’re about and what we’re doing and what we’re doing with relationships with our players and the direction that we’re going into.

“It’s exciting times here.”