NORMAN - The first play Trevor Knight ran as Oklahoma quarterback against Louisiana-Monroe, the Sooners crowded his backfield with Brennan Clay, Trey Millard and Aaron Ripkowski and sent two receivers wide. Knight handed to Clay on a read option.
The first play Knight ran against West Virginia, OU put Clay in the slot with the two wideouts but still ran the ball. Knight carried for 9 yards on another option.
Saturday, with Blake Bell having replaced Knight, the Sooners doubled their receiver allotment. They sent Jalen Saunders, Sterling Shepard, Lacoltan Bester and Jaz Reynolds wide on their first play. Then they let Bell complete three passes for 44 yards down to the Tulsa 18. Only then did they load the backfield, running four straight times until Clay reached the end zone.
The new quarterback seemed to signify a change back to the habits of OU's past six years. The pass game was in again, something magnified three hours later by Bell's 413 yards and four touchdowns.
Afterward, Bob Stoops confirmed we'll see Bell at quarterback the next time the Sooners play Sept. 28 at Notre Dame. He could not, however, say for sure if we would see a total recommitment to air-it-out offense.
"We're gonna mix," he said. "We'll choose what we run according to what defenses are out there and what personnel we have."
In this vein, Stoops and offensive coordinator Josh Heupel insisted OU threw 37 passes against Tulsa because the Golden Hurricane could be victimized that way, not just because the personnel at quarterback had changed.
They both insisted that Bell could run the Pistol, read-option, run-heavy offense they favored with Knight the first two games.
"We still have all that stuff in," center Gabe Ikard confirmed. "Blake is very athletic and can handle that. He doesn't have the same level of speed that Trevor has, but he's still a quick guy that can get out there and use his legs to make a big play."
It's hard to know that based on Saturday. The majority of Bell's runs were improvised scrambles from the pocket. He had just three ride-and-keep zone-read carries.
He still seems best at lowering his shoulder and plowing forward as he did the past two years running the Belldozer, not speeding wide and cutting upfield like Knight did in rushing for 103 yards against ULM.
The Sooners still cranked out 194 rushing yards. They still ran zone reads from the Pistol, even if the backs carried the overwhelming bulk of the load. It's just the pizzazz of their offense was suddenly in the passing game.
It is an interesting predicament. OU redesigned its offense last offseason to get more of a dual threat out of a fleeter-footed quarterback. Then Kendal Thompson got hurt early in camp. Knight got hurt against West Virginia, but not before he'd shown he wasn't much of a threat with his arm cocked.
That opened the position for Bell. By the time he was through with Tulsa, he had established he was OU's quarterback moving forward.
The question for Stoops and Heupel: What is OU's offensive identity moving forward?
Up next
At Notre Dame
2:30 p.m. Sept. 28
TV: KJRH-9/2
Radio: KMOD fm97.5, KTBZ am1430
Guerin Emig 918-581-8355
guerin.emig@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Sooners' offensive identity up in air
OU
Quarterback Blake Bell was asked to assess good things and bad things he did during his first start in last weekend's 51-20 victory over Tulsa.
Oklahoma senior middle blocker Sallie McLaurin was named National Player of the Week by the American Volleyball Coaches Association on Tuesday.
