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Sooners' speedy approach an asset
Offensive coordinator Wilson finally has OU moving at his pace.
  
By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Writer
Published: 10/25/2008  2:07 AM
Last Modified: 10/25/2008  2:15 AM

Offensive coordinator Wilson finally has OU moving at his pace.



MANHATTAN, Kan. — Oklahoma football last week managed its largest offensive output in a generation. Why?

All the Josh Heupels, Jason Whites, Quentin Griffins, Adrian Petersons, Mark Claytons and Malcolm Kellys that have come through the program since Bob Stoops became head coach, for all the offensive talent OU has had during the past 20 years, no Oklahoma team amassed more total yards than OU did last week against Kansas.

The Sooners' output of 674 yards, 97 plays and 36 first downs is what can happen when a program like Oklahoma runs a hurry-up, no-huddle offense.

"Obviously, we put up a lot of numbers," said quarterback Sam Bradford, who set the school standard with 468 yards passing. "But even more than just the no-huddle, it was our execution."

"For the most part," said OU offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson, "I think we did pretty good."

Wilson and the Sooners hope to do pretty good again Saturday when No. 4 Oklahoma (6-1 overall, 2-1 Big 12) visits Kansas State (4-3, 1-2) in an 11:30 a.m. conference game at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

OU is a 19-point favorite, so it probably will not take another record-setting offensive performance. Kansas State, though, will try to resist with the Big 12's lowest-ranked defense, so more records could fall.

Wilson, a frenetic personality with a hummingbird's pace, is in his third season as OU's play-caller, but it is the first time he has everyone else moving at his speed.

The genesis of Wilson's no-huddle goes back to 1999, when Randy Walker was hired from Miami-Ohio to replace Gary Barnett as head coach at Northwestern. Walker brought Wilson, his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Miami, to design Northwestern's schemes.

That first season, they didn't have much to work with.

"We played I-formation, ball control," Wilson said. "We held the ball 34 minutes a game and averaged 12.7 points — and got smoked."

The next year, Wilson said, the Wildcats lost three tight ends and three fullbacks. So Walker told Wilson to come up with something different.

In Ohio, they had been exposed to Sam Wyche's Cincinnati Bengals offense, with Boomer Esiason operating a scheme wherein players eschewed huddling for calling plays at the line. Wilson remembered watching Clemson play Virginia Tech during the '99 season, and he saw something new. The Clemson quarterback stood behind the center, looking to the sideline at the coaches, who were gyrating and waving and frenetically sending signals to him.

"I kind of liked it," Wilson said. "First time I'd really noticed somebody looking over.

"My thought was, 'Well, they're just telling that guy who to throw it to. That's kind of neat.' Instead of him thinking, they're thinking for him."

Rich Rodriguez was Clemson's offensive coordinator. Rodriguez once emulated Mouse Davis, throwing on every down (one receiver caught 144 passes in a season), but over the years he adapted to a running game. He was renowned for his offense at West Virginia; now he is head coach at Michigan.

When Walker and Wilson were looking for a new wrinkle, they first looked at Joe Tiller's pass-first Purdue scheme, but Walker, an old fullback, "thought they threw it too much. That wasn't his style," Wilson said. So they combined Wyche's no-huddle with a touch of Tiller's West Coast and Rodriguez' full-throttle pace into a new version of the spread, and adapted it for Northwestern's talent.

"When we did it at Northwestern, we were so bad defensively, we weren't worried about it," he said. "We had tried to play a conservative offense and it didn't work. We couldn't score enough, and we couldn't stop anybody, so it was like, 'We've got to outscore people.' We became a track-meet team."

The Northwestern offense flourished. Rodriguez often called and told Wilson, "you're running our offense better than we are."

Wilson said he was "kind of surprised" last winter when Stoops asked him to put it in. Wilson said "we jacked around with it" when Chuck Long was offensive coordinator, but the timing hadn't been right since 2005 because of quarterback instability in '06 and '07.

Now, with a smart and poised Bradford back for a second season and experienced players all around him, Wilson had the green light.

Quarterbacks coach Josh Heupel said OU's speedy pace is unique.

The Sooners lead the nation with 80.4 plays per game, and it is unlikely that any team snaps the football faster. Players love it.

"The tempo at practice is so upbeat, there's never a downtime," Heupel said. "You're constantly moving."

For Wilson, it goes back to fundamentals.

"Everything's possible when you block, when you play hard and you don't turn it over," he said.

OFFENSIVE OUTBURST



Sam Bradford has quarterbacked three of the top five single-game yardage outputs in OU’s 10 seasons under Bob Stoops, including last week’s 674 yards against Kansas. The top five:

674 Oct. 18, 2008 OU 45, Kansas 31 Sam Bradford throws for school-record 468 yards with three TDs.

668 Sept. 1, 2007 OU 79, North Texas 10 Bradford goes 21-of-23 for 363 yards; DeMarco Murray scores five TDs.

639 Nov. 8, 2003 OU 77, Texas A&M 0 Jason White is 16-of-18 with five TDs; Donta Hickson, Kejuan Jones run for over 100.

617 Sept. 15, 2007 OU 54, Utah State 3 Bradford throws for 255, three TDs; Murray, Allen Patrick both surpass 100 rushing.

613 Oct. 4, 2003 OU 53, Iowa State 7 White passes for 384 yards and five TDs; Renaldo Works runs for 95.



John E. Hoover 581-8384
john.hoover@tulsaworld.com
By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Writer

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2 comments have been made for this team so far. Tell us what you think below!
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Thomas Cothran, (10/25/2008 2:34:38 AM)
How many times is it legal to write words with the base 'frenetic' in an article? I just think Hoover went over the limit. Good story though.
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5055567475852000, Euless (10/26/2008 8:03:32 AM)
Glad we have these so-called outbursts; hasn't it seemed that OU has started off exceptionally strong, only to "peter out" as the game progresses? I've noticed this, oh, maybe for the past four years. Case in point, just look at yesterday. We did so well in our outburst that we decided to score only three lousy-@ss points the entire second half. Similar to Texas, we decided to score early, lead for three quarters, and lose the game by taking the rest of the game off. Do we need more examples? Colorado last year? Others? I think you get the picture.
 

 
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