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What Exactly is Oklahoma's Offensive Identity? Do the Sooners Really Need One?

Run or pass, deep throws or inside handoffs, Sooners' offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby wants to remain versatile as long as OU doesn't sacrifice "fast, fearless and physical."

John E. Hoover

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NORMAN – Does Oklahoma have an identity offensively?

Does a college football team need one?

Yes, and yes, says Sooners offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby.

“Yeah, I think it is important to have an identity,” Lebby said.

But at OU, having an offensive identity doesn’t mean constricting one’s game plans to specific parameters or shapes or designations. Lebby doesn’t want to just think outside the box. He wants the Sooners to live both inside and outside of it. And forget a box, Lebby would prefer something far more nebulous. And any good contemporary offense should be able to coordinate with anything that’s well established or newly innovated, regardless of its roots or what it’s called.

So, then, what is Oklahoma’s identity?

Two of their three games – they’re 3-0 and ranked No. 16 in the AP Top 25 – began with a deep throw and featured long passes throughout, while the middle one included nothing deeper than 20 yards. One game the Sooners might try to major in handoffs to the running back in an inside-zone scheme, and another they might seem to want to exploit outside zone.

Is that simply targeted versatility? Or is it an offense without an actual identity?

“Hopefully, when people watch us, they see us playing really fast and being fearless and having great physicality about the unit,” Lebby said Monday at his weekly press conference at Memorial Stadium. “That’s who we want to be.”

If it’s been hard to put a finger on what Lebby’s trying to accomplish this season, that’s the way he wants it.

So what if four running backs have double-digit carries, but none have 30 yet? So what if 10 receivers have at least three catches but none has 15 yet? So what if one guy (Tawee Walker) goes for 100 yards on the ground one week and then doesn’t touch the football the next? So what if one guy (Jaquaize Pettaway) leads the team with nine receptions one game but then doesn’t even play the next?

When the Sooners play at Cincinnati this week, the game plan will look different than it did last week at Tulsa. The Bearcats have NFL players on the defensive line. The Golden Hurricane probably didn’t. What worked at Chapman Stadium might not work at Nippert.

So just because an offense begins to establish trends over the course of a season doesn’t mean those trends can’t evolve. Lebby reserves the right to change his mind from week to week.

So as far as Oklahoma’s offensive identity, the opponent will determine much of that.

“I think the biggest thing is what you’re getting on the other side of the football,” Lebby said. “If you have the ability to pitch and catch and throw it all over the yard because that’s what you are being presented, then do that. If the box is incredibly light and you have the chance to go run the football 74 times, go do that.”

Lebby knows what he wants Oklahoma’s offense to feel like, even if it doesn’t look like any one thing in particular.

Identity, Lebby says, isn’t what you do. It’s how you do it.

“We want to be an offense that’s on the attack, that has great balance and is going to take what the defense gives us,” Lebby said. “That, to us, is who we want to be every single Saturday.

“ … Putting guys in the position of success is our job. Ultimately playing fast, being fearless in how we call it and having great physicality are the three things that, when people watch us, they see that.”

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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