Inside Slant

The Sports Xchange

September 18, 2018 at 10:57 pm.

Sooners prepare for option offense

Way back in the spring, Oklahoma started preparing, a little at a time, for Army’s unique offensive attack.

They did the same thing during preseason camp, before they started opponent-specific work looking at any other team they’ll face this season.

“It’s a challenge,” Sooners coach Lincoln Riley said.

“It’s one of those as a coach, you sit there and (think), all right, if we spend all this time preparing for them, then we’re not preparing for the other however-many games we play. And if we don’t spend enough time, then they’ll come in and beat you and that’s the reality of it.

“They’re good enough to do it.”

Army’s triple-option attack is one that few college teams run, and one the Sooners haven’t faced since 2010 when they played Air Force — though Tulane used some option principles a year ago.

“Defending the triple-option is strictly assignment football,” middle linebacker Kenneth Murray said. “If you don’t do your assignment this play they can bust one for a touchdown. Everybody has to be honed in on their keys.”

One of the difficulties, Riley said, is in giving his defense a credible look with the scout-team offense.

“You have to be creative with your roster,” Riley said.

“That’s something we’ve looked at well ahead of time even as much as looking at the guys we’re bringing in and what they played in high school and guys that have experience with it. We’ll see how the week goes. We think we have a pretty good plan with it. The good thing is when you play a team like this, what we do offensively is probably fairly difficult for them to simulate as well.”

The Black Knights average just 140 yards per game through the air, among the lowest in FBS. Army has attempted an average of just 13 passes per game.

Though Riley’s offensive attack has changed since he started coaching under Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense that favored the pass about as much as Army’s favors the run, Riley said the two were similar.

“I appreciate it a ton because they believe in what they do and do it at a high level,” Riley said.

“There were a lot of years there where we thought, offensively, they were the team we were the most similar to at Texas Tech in distributing the balls and not having a thousand different plays and trying to get good at a few things,” Riley said. “It looks radically different, but the core beliefs are very similar.”

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