I think this has been posted on here before, but it's worth reading as we head into UT-ou week.
The play that makes Oklahoma’s ground game go
By Bruce Feldman Sep 17, 2019
39
The college game’s hottest run concept comes from a very surprising place — an Air Raid system.
Five years ago when Bob Stoops hired 32-year-old Lincoln Riley from East Carolina to be Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator, skeptics wondered if the Sooners would become too one-dimensional — read: pass-happy — and neglect their own power football DNA.
Instead, Oklahoma has created the most feared offense in football. And according to rival coaches, one of the main reasons behind it is a devastating rushing attack that in 2018 led the FBS in yards per carry and this season is No. 2 at 8.32 per rush. The start of this season is the first time in program’s storied history the Sooners have averaged at least 7.5 yards per rush in three consecutive games.
For more context of how potent this offense has been, consider this: In its history, Oklahoma has rushed for at least 300 yards and passed for at least 300 in a game 14 times. Seven of those occasions have been in the last 10 games — including the first three games this season.
The secret sauce is the Sooners’ GT concept, which is the baby of Oklahoma co-offensive coordinator Bill Bedenbaugh and was created with the help of Riley and the rest of the Sooners staff.
“It’s a gap scheme with a guard-tackle puller,” Bedenbaugh says. “I call it double-pullers, GT. It’s not much different than the old counter where you’re pulling a guard or a center and the fullback is the second puller.”
Bedenbaugh, who was a four-year starting offensive lineman at Iowa Wesleyan under Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, says they ran a play called G-Fold that was similar to GT. “We ran it, we practiced it,” Bedenbaugh says. “But it wasn’t a huge play. So we kind of went away from it.”
Leach’s Texas Tech team, with Bedenbaugh as the offensive line coach, ran it two times against UTEP in 2006.
“That stuff got choked out,” says Brandon Jones, Texas Tech’s center that day and now Houston’s run game coordinator and a protégé of Bedenbaugh. “Leach was like, we’re not running that shit anymore. We worked it. We repped it like crazy and then we kinda got away from it.”
When Riley left Texas Tech to become East Carolina’s offensive coordinator in 2010, Jones was hired as the Pirates’ offensive line coach. The Pirates ran the play — which used to be called 30 — that was designed to go against a 4-1 defensive box where the center back-blocked the 1-technique (the defensive tackle lined up on the strong side of the center) and the strongside guard pulled to the middle linebacker. If the defense showed a 4-2 front, with a second linebacker in the box, the quarterback was expected to check out of the play. But if he didn’t, the backside offensive tackle would pull.
Bedenbaugh studied ECU cut-ups after the 2014 season when Riley was hired at Oklahoma to take over the offense. Bedenbaugh called Jones to find out his rationale for the play, and then the Sooners’ line coach and Riley went to work brainstorming.
“And then you look up and (Bedenbaugh) had kinda mastered it,” Jones says. “I know he had wanted to do it previously and that had kinda given him the green light. That next season, they ran it to a T. They perfected it. They can run it versus any front. He’s got adjustments forever.
“The stuff they do is unreal as far as adjustments and answers. They’re probably the best in the game. I don’t know how they get to some of the stuff they do, but they do. In the Big 12 everybody plays Bear, it’s like that defense’s Kryptonite.”
ECU ran a man-blocking scheme when Jones and Riley were on staff. Oklahoma runs a gap scheme.The idea for the play evolved late in the 2015 season when the Sooners were playing Clemson in the Orange Bowl. In prepping for the Tigers, Oklahoma had noticed that Notre Dame had run something like the GT play against Clemson with some success, Bedenbaugh says.
“It was another year we were inexperienced up front,” he says. “We had two freshman tackles. We had a sophomore guard. We’re just trying to do something to find angles.”
Says Riley, “We ran it on the first third-and-long of the game, and we got it.We continued to have success with it, and it just kind of fit our personality and our physical nature. As people have adjusted to it, we’ve continued to adapt and been able to do it up out of a few different formations and alignments.
“We just got good at it and found some different ways to use it, and it’s just kind of grown and grown and become a bigger part of who we are on a week-to-week basis.”
The Sooners’ rushing average has gone from 5.0 yards per carry in that Orange Bowl season of 2015 to 5.4, 5.6, 6.6 and now 8.3 this season.
It helps that Oklahoma has had a terrific stable of running backs, a deep crop of receivers and star QBs ever since Riley showed up, with Alabama grad transfer Jalen Hurts being the latest gem. Maybe even more important is having a physical and smart offensive linethat can handle all of the adjustments Bedenbaugh is teaching them. In 2018, Bedenbaugh’s group won the Joe Moore Award for the Most Outstanding Offensive Line Unit in College Football.
“The mentality he instills in us, it’s that butt-kicking mentality,” center Creed Humphrey says. “We’re gonna do whatever it takes to put someone on the ground. We’re gonna put people in the dirt as much as we can. And he recruits people who like doing that, so it’s kinda the perfect storm for what he does.”
Riley says of the Sooners’ offensive linemen, “That’s a huge part of our evaluation — can they mentally handle all we put on ’em? I also think that’s the reason why a lot of our guys when they get to the next level are ready and normally have good early success because mentally, they get pushed pretty hard here.”
The Sooners adjust their GT game on a weekly basis. Last week’s against UCLA, for instance, the Sooners made tweaks based on how the Bruins aligned in certain fronts. Most of the time, the Sooners have their rules and then adjust to what the defense is doing. “To me, it doesn’t matter what front you line up in,” Bedenbaugh says. “We have answers — now you got to execute and all those things. But we have answers to whatever they’re doing. And as long as execute then we’re fine.”
The irony of this is that a couple of longtime Air Raid guys are running the ball better than Oklahoma has in years. In the four seasons prior to Bedenbaugh’s arrival in Norman, Oklahoma ranked seventh, seventh, 10th and seventh in the Big 12 in rushing. Since then, the Sooners have made GT a foundational element of their offense. Last year they ran it more than any other ground play, around 112 or 113 times, Bedenbaugh says, followed by inside zone. They’ll run it in any situation, including third-and-long, and they have all sorts of wrinkles off it.
“We got throws off of it. We got play-action. We got RPOs. It is our main run play,” Bedenbaugh says. “People know that’s what we’re gonna do and it’s still hard to defend. Part of it is we’ve got so much off of it too that they have to account for.”
Hurts, who runs sub 4.5 seconds in the 40 and has the strength of a big tailback at 220 pounds, brings an added dimension to the Sooners’ offense. He has 373 rushing yards in the first three games. And well before Hurts, Oklahoma already was making rival defensive coaches’ heads spin with everything it does with its GT play. In 2017, Bedenbaugh made a cut-up and figured out the Sooners had run it at least 40 different ways, whether from two backs, with tight ends, motions or arching a tight end. In some cases they would run it a certain way one week and never run it that way again.
“It’s really hard to handle because of who their QBs have been,” says North Carolina defensive coordinator Jay Bateman, who faced Oklahoma in 2018 when he was Army’s defensive coordinator. “You don’t want Jalen Hurts to pull it, so you have to handle conventional zone plays and then try and get all the gaps fit with a very athletic OL pulling. It’s very difficult and made more difficult by who the QBs have been. I felt like I would live with trying to fit the run on the other side — because of all the QB run and RPOs off of it.”
Says Jones, “It’s like the perfect storm, to be honest.”
(Top photo: Kelvin Kuo / USA TODAY Sports)
The play that makes Oklahoma’s ground game go
By Bruce Feldman Sep 17, 2019
The college game’s hottest run concept comes from a very surprising place — an Air Raid system.
Five years ago when Bob Stoops hired 32-year-old Lincoln Riley from East Carolina to be Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator, skeptics wondered if the Sooners would become too one-dimensional — read: pass-happy — and neglect their own power football DNA.
Instead, Oklahoma has created the most feared offense in football. And according to rival coaches, one of the main reasons behind it is a devastating rushing attack that in 2018 led the FBS in yards per carry and this season is No. 2 at 8.32 per rush. The start of this season is the first time in program’s storied history the Sooners have averaged at least 7.5 yards per rush in three consecutive games.
For more context of how potent this offense has been, consider this: In its history, Oklahoma has rushed for at least 300 yards and passed for at least 300 in a game 14 times. Seven of those occasions have been in the last 10 games — including the first three games this season.
The secret sauce is the Sooners’ GT concept, which is the baby of Oklahoma co-offensive coordinator Bill Bedenbaugh and was created with the help of Riley and the rest of the Sooners staff.
“It’s a gap scheme with a guard-tackle puller,” Bedenbaugh says. “I call it double-pullers, GT. It’s not much different than the old counter where you’re pulling a guard or a center and the fullback is the second puller.”
Bedenbaugh, who was a four-year starting offensive lineman at Iowa Wesleyan under Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, says they ran a play called G-Fold that was similar to GT. “We ran it, we practiced it,” Bedenbaugh says. “But it wasn’t a huge play. So we kind of went away from it.”
Leach’s Texas Tech team, with Bedenbaugh as the offensive line coach, ran it two times against UTEP in 2006.
“That stuff got choked out,” says Brandon Jones, Texas Tech’s center that day and now Houston’s run game coordinator and a protégé of Bedenbaugh. “Leach was like, we’re not running that shit anymore. We worked it. We repped it like crazy and then we kinda got away from it.”
When Riley left Texas Tech to become East Carolina’s offensive coordinator in 2010, Jones was hired as the Pirates’ offensive line coach. The Pirates ran the play — which used to be called 30 — that was designed to go against a 4-1 defensive box where the center back-blocked the 1-technique (the defensive tackle lined up on the strong side of the center) and the strongside guard pulled to the middle linebacker. If the defense showed a 4-2 front, with a second linebacker in the box, the quarterback was expected to check out of the play. But if he didn’t, the backside offensive tackle would pull.
Bedenbaugh studied ECU cut-ups after the 2014 season when Riley was hired at Oklahoma to take over the offense. Bedenbaugh called Jones to find out his rationale for the play, and then the Sooners’ line coach and Riley went to work brainstorming.
“And then you look up and (Bedenbaugh) had kinda mastered it,” Jones says. “I know he had wanted to do it previously and that had kinda given him the green light. That next season, they ran it to a T. They perfected it. They can run it versus any front. He’s got adjustments forever.
“The stuff they do is unreal as far as adjustments and answers. They’re probably the best in the game. I don’t know how they get to some of the stuff they do, but they do. In the Big 12 everybody plays Bear, it’s like that defense’s Kryptonite.”
ECU ran a man-blocking scheme when Jones and Riley were on staff. Oklahoma runs a gap scheme.The idea for the play evolved late in the 2015 season when the Sooners were playing Clemson in the Orange Bowl. In prepping for the Tigers, Oklahoma had noticed that Notre Dame had run something like the GT play against Clemson with some success, Bedenbaugh says.
“It was another year we were inexperienced up front,” he says. “We had two freshman tackles. We had a sophomore guard. We’re just trying to do something to find angles.”
Says Riley, “We ran it on the first third-and-long of the game, and we got it.We continued to have success with it, and it just kind of fit our personality and our physical nature. As people have adjusted to it, we’ve continued to adapt and been able to do it up out of a few different formations and alignments.
“We just got good at it and found some different ways to use it, and it’s just kind of grown and grown and become a bigger part of who we are on a week-to-week basis.”
The Sooners’ rushing average has gone from 5.0 yards per carry in that Orange Bowl season of 2015 to 5.4, 5.6, 6.6 and now 8.3 this season.
It helps that Oklahoma has had a terrific stable of running backs, a deep crop of receivers and star QBs ever since Riley showed up, with Alabama grad transfer Jalen Hurts being the latest gem. Maybe even more important is having a physical and smart offensive linethat can handle all of the adjustments Bedenbaugh is teaching them. In 2018, Bedenbaugh’s group won the Joe Moore Award for the Most Outstanding Offensive Line Unit in College Football.
“The mentality he instills in us, it’s that butt-kicking mentality,” center Creed Humphrey says. “We’re gonna do whatever it takes to put someone on the ground. We’re gonna put people in the dirt as much as we can. And he recruits people who like doing that, so it’s kinda the perfect storm for what he does.”
Riley says of the Sooners’ offensive linemen, “That’s a huge part of our evaluation — can they mentally handle all we put on ’em? I also think that’s the reason why a lot of our guys when they get to the next level are ready and normally have good early success because mentally, they get pushed pretty hard here.”
The Sooners adjust their GT game on a weekly basis. Last week’s against UCLA, for instance, the Sooners made tweaks based on how the Bruins aligned in certain fronts. Most of the time, the Sooners have their rules and then adjust to what the defense is doing. “To me, it doesn’t matter what front you line up in,” Bedenbaugh says. “We have answers — now you got to execute and all those things. But we have answers to whatever they’re doing. And as long as execute then we’re fine.”
The irony of this is that a couple of longtime Air Raid guys are running the ball better than Oklahoma has in years. In the four seasons prior to Bedenbaugh’s arrival in Norman, Oklahoma ranked seventh, seventh, 10th and seventh in the Big 12 in rushing. Since then, the Sooners have made GT a foundational element of their offense. Last year they ran it more than any other ground play, around 112 or 113 times, Bedenbaugh says, followed by inside zone. They’ll run it in any situation, including third-and-long, and they have all sorts of wrinkles off it.
“We got throws off of it. We got play-action. We got RPOs. It is our main run play,” Bedenbaugh says. “People know that’s what we’re gonna do and it’s still hard to defend. Part of it is we’ve got so much off of it too that they have to account for.”
Hurts, who runs sub 4.5 seconds in the 40 and has the strength of a big tailback at 220 pounds, brings an added dimension to the Sooners’ offense. He has 373 rushing yards in the first three games. And well before Hurts, Oklahoma already was making rival defensive coaches’ heads spin with everything it does with its GT play. In 2017, Bedenbaugh made a cut-up and figured out the Sooners had run it at least 40 different ways, whether from two backs, with tight ends, motions or arching a tight end. In some cases they would run it a certain way one week and never run it that way again.
“It’s really hard to handle because of who their QBs have been,” says North Carolina defensive coordinator Jay Bateman, who faced Oklahoma in 2018 when he was Army’s defensive coordinator. “You don’t want Jalen Hurts to pull it, so you have to handle conventional zone plays and then try and get all the gaps fit with a very athletic OL pulling. It’s very difficult and made more difficult by who the QBs have been. I felt like I would live with trying to fit the run on the other side — because of all the QB run and RPOs off of it.”
Says Jones, “It’s like the perfect storm, to be honest.”
(Top photo: Kelvin Kuo / USA TODAY Sports)
