Sooners thrive on speed
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By BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
How fast can this schooner go?
They don’t mind finding out on occasion at Oklahoma, even if new wagon wheels are needed come season’s end. The Sooners’ no-huddle offense presents a mixture of tempos — SEE ALSO: headaches — for a defense.
The Sooners are not afraid to slow dance one series and leave a team breathless the next — snapping the ball fast, not stopping for anything, a celebratory high-five included.
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“Like a race car out of the blocks,” is how Texas coach Mack Brown described the Sooners when they play fast.
“They do a good job of shuttling guys on and off the field, and we just couldn’t keep up with it,” said Kansas coach Mark Mangino after his team got blistered for 674 yards by OU on 97 — yeah, 97 — plays.
They can play at any pace, but the Sooners especially seem to thrive when playing fast or faster. Their offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson even talks fast, according to the Wall Street Journal, which recently devoted some space to analyzing the speedy Sooners.
Wilson told the Journal he doesn’t even want his guys stopping for high-fives. That could get in the way of more snaps.
“You don’t have time to celebrate. You don’t have time to high-five. You can’t play to the crowd. You can’t get mad,” Wilson said. “We need to play.”
The 7-1 Sooners just started using a no-huddle offense this year. The results have come with big numbers. They’ve scored more than 50 points four times and more than 45 six times.
Enter the Husker defense, still a work in progress, set for probably its tallest task of the season on Saturday night when Nebraska (5-3) travels to No. 4 Oklahoma for a nationally televised game.
Prepping for OU is tough enough because of the talent it brings to the table — quarterback Sam Bradford, running back DeMarco Murray, tight end Jermaine Gresham and wide receiver Juaquin Iglesias. And then there’s the issue of tempo, which can keep a defense as off-balance as all those game-breaking players.
“They change tempos a lot. You can rep it all you want in practice. It’s tough to really get the same tempo going that you’re to see in the game,” Husker defensive coordinator Carl Pelini said.
“They’re just one of those teams, we’ve all faced them, where they just have different tempos. And one of them is their hurry-up, where they’re just going to move quick. And you just got to weather that storm for three or four plays, or for a series, and then they’ll go back to a normal tempo again. But your guys always have to be ready for that possibility.”
And while defenses are scrambling to try to match OU’s personnel, Husker head coach Bo Pelini has noticed Bradford is one guy on the field who always keeps his head.
“He seems like a really calm, cooled, collected guy,” Pelini said. “He’s a very good decision-maker. He’s very accurate in how he throws, he makes good decisions, he makes quick decisions.”
Husker defensive coaches and players will have to make just as quick of decisions. Nebraska was bothered some in the first half against Baylor by the way the Bears shuttled players off the field just before the snap, leaving the Huskers in occasional limbo to try to match personnel. Baylor’s ploy had Husker coaches barking at the officials, but it ended up being something Nebraska just had to deal with.
Turns out that experience might have some benefits.
“I think last Saturday is really going to help us this Saturday with that,” Carl Pelini said.
Still, the pace of Oklahoma’s offense has given some of the best defensive minds fits this year.
TCU head coach Gary Patterson’s team, ranked 12th in the country, lost 35-10 to Oklahoma on Sept. 27. Patterson, one of those defensive-guru types, said he was often still making defensive calls while the Sooners were snapping the ball.
“When I quit trying to be a guru, we played much better,” he said in the Wall Street Journal story.
OU senior center Jon Cooper explained the Sooners’ quick attack like this to the Dallas Morning News: “The defense can’t sub. They could be in a nickel package, and we can go from [an] empty [set] to big without changing anybody, and they have an extra defensive back on the field when we’re going to try to run the ball instead of them loading the box. They have to make a choice for a drive instead of a play.”
And playing fast doesn’t mean they lack the physical aspect.
Pelini said this is the best offensive line NU will face this year. Senior defensive end Zach Potter noted that the left tackle he’s going against is 6-foot-8, 340 pounds.
“They are very, very balanced in what they do and the problems they present,” Pelini said. “You have to have some balance on defense. There is some give and take. You have to defend the run some with less guys in the box, and there are going to be times where you need to add an extra guy in the box and take our chances outside.”
Taking your chances on the outside can be a risky proposition given the skills of Bradford, who is fifth in the country in total offense (2,775 passing yards) and third in the country in pass efficiency.
They’re a tough team, junior nose tackle Ndamukong Suh said. But he sees this Nebraska team getting tougher, too.
“There is no doubt that I think we can have a great game against them and definitely push them to the limits,” Suh said.
If it’s a tough challenge, it also seems one Huskers are looking forward to taking on.
“We don’t ever talk about fear,” Carl Pelini said. “Really our message to our guys is, ‘Hey, it doesn’t matter who we’re playing, we need to execute. We need to worry about what we do. We can’t control what they’re going to do. We can’t control what plays they’re going to call.’
“We don’t have to do anything outside of ourselves, outside of our abilities or outside of schemes. We just need to play our football game and do it as well as we can do it and execute.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.
