Oklahoma OC Jeff Lebby Wants to Connect on More Deep Throws

Whether it's a missed throw or a dropped catch or a defensive back making a play, the Sooners' deep ball has been slightly off.

NORMAN — Jeff Lebby wants to go deep. He really does.

But when a quarterback throws the football deep, it only takes one thing being slightly off to produce an incompletion.

In Oklahoma’s case, it’s one thing here or there — a dropped pass, a defensive deflection, an overthrow or an underthrow — that is disrupting the deep ball.

That happened a lot Saturday in the Sooners’ 27-13 win at Iowa State.

“Not making competitive plays down the field kept the game really close,” Lebby said. “And they challenged. They make it hard. But you got to make those plays to get away from guys like that.”

Marvin Mims — as sure-handed a wideout as there is the nation — dropped a wide-open ball from Gabriel on the first play of the game, a well-designed play by Lebby that began with Mims in the backfield and isolated him up the right sideline.

Gabriel also threw deep to Mims later in the first quarter, but it was broken up by Iowa State’s T.J. Tampa.

Tampa also broke up a deep throw to Mims in the third quarter, then did the same thing in the fourth quarter.

On two of those, Mims appeared to be wide open, but the ball was slightly underthrown.

“I think after going back and looking at the tape, I really felt it in the game, from a deep-shot standpoint, I really liked the ball placement all day,” Lebby said Monday during his weekly news conference. “Had a chance to run under a couple that we didn’t, just bodying up the ball in the air, but really did like the ball placement throughout the day.”

The lack of deep completions have limited Lebby’s offense somewhat this season. When he was with Gabriel at Central Florida in 2019, Lebby’s offense produced 15.5 yards per completion. In 2020 at Ole Miss, Rebels QB Matt Corral averaged 14.4 yards per completion. Last year, however, Corral’s average dipped to 12.7.

That’s what Oklahoma is currently sitting at through eight games, 12.7 yards per completion.

A few more deep balls will alert the opposing secondary to be on their heels, and that will open up more underneath throws as well as the run game. When that happens, Oklahoma’s offense will finally be hitting on all cylinders.

When Gabriel arrived at Oklahoma, he came with a strong reputation for throwing the deep ball and being accurate.

In his two full seasons as the starter at UCF, Gabriel averaged 14.4 and 15.5 yards per completion — the latter number coming in 2019, when Lebby was the Knights’ offensive coordinator.

But so far through eight games, Gabriel is averaging 13.7 yards per completion, and OU as a team is only averaging 12.7.

Similarly, Mims averaged 22.0 yards per catch as a sophomore at OU last season, while this season he’s averaging a career-low 16.4 (he averaged 16.5 yards per catch as a true freshman in 2020).

“We want to have the ability to create chunk plays,” Lebby said. “I don't think that's news to anybody at all. We want to be able to do that. So pushing the ball down the field, making those plays is going to be a big part of who we are. We'll continue to play that way while staying patient and taking what people give us.”

To see Mims drop such an easy pass was almost shocking. He set the Texas high school record for most career receiving yards with 5,485, and as a senior at Frisco High School caught 117 passes.

Not to worry, Lebby said.

“For Marv, it’s just having the short memory,” Lebby said. “Because I’m gonna have one. I’m gonna go back to him. He just needs to play that next play.

“We’re gonna continue to have a ton of confidence in him.”