Oklahoma Sooners HC Brent Venables speaks on simplifying offense moving forward, 'Don't let the players think'
After another brutal showing on offense in Week 4 against the Tennessee Volunteers, the Oklahoma Sooners are desperate for answers on the offensive side of the ball. They've already benched Jackson Arnold, replacing him with Michael Hawkins for at least the Auburn game. Now, the Sooners are turning to addressing their scheme and internal issues […]
After another brutal showing on offense in Week 4 against the Tennessee Volunteers, the Oklahoma Sooners are desperate for answers on the offensive side of the ball.
They've already benched Jackson Arnold, replacing him with Michael Hawkins for at least the Auburn game.
Now, the Sooners are turning to addressing their scheme and internal issues with their offense. They're turning to simplifying the offense for all young and inexperienced players and returning to the basics.
A lot of their potential turnover signals a move away from a heavy RPO-style offense. There have been several miscommunications trying to run this offense from too many different players, leading to mistakes that have cost the Sooners' offense on critical drives.
On the backward pass lateral that was arguably the dagger against Tennessee, the play call is a slant-bubble RPO call. Jackson Arnold, correctly, pulls the ball and looks to throw the slant because the linebacker crashes.
The problem? Brenen Thompson just doesn't run the slant. He stays to block. Arnold has to pull back to the bubble, but the timing is off, a rusher comes free, and Arnold gets hit while he throws and it ends up backward.
There's so much turnover on offense this season. Just one starter returned from last year's team, Nic Anderson, and he's been hurt for all but one play this season.
With this much turnover, running these concepts requiring better timing, communication, and execution doesn't work when players are prone to mental mistakes.
The worst part is that Arnold isn't often making the wrong read on these RPOs. It's a simple play for a quarterback. But then a receiver runs the wrong route, a lineman gets the protection call wrong, a back misses his block, or any number of issues spiral the play.
It's no surprise that when Oklahoma ran more of a desperation offense with Michael Hawkins and got rid of much of the RPOs, the offense moved and had two scoring drives.
Later on at his Tuesday press conference, Venables addressed how the over-complication of the offense ruins a lot of their momentum.
Now, the staff deserves a fair amount of criticism for how long this went on. I wrote after the Houston game that there were things the staff could have been doing to make the offense easier and weren't.
With all of the injuries going on and young players being forced to step in, the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) method is typically the first thing implemented.
Hopefully, the Sooners implement something simpler soon that keeps the offense moving. Otherwise, it could be a long season for Oklahoma.
