In this day and age of the NCAA’s transfer portal, maybe it’s not necessarily a novel concept for an offensive coordinator and starting quarterback to pair for a second time at a different school.
Oklahoma is hoping this second act is even more successful than the first for OU’s new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Jeff Lebby and transfer quarterback Dillon Gabriel.
Gabriel threw for 3,653 yards and 29 touchdowns in his true freshman season at UCF with Lebby as his offensive coordinator. The Knights finished 10-3 that season.
After two seasons apart, the pair is reunited at Oklahoma. Lebby made it clear on national signing day that Gabriel is OU’s unquestioned starter heading into the spring.
“Yeah, Dillon’s our guy right now as we move forward. Again, we’ve got one guy on our roster that’s thrown a college football pass. Obviously, he’s thrown a bunch of them, and he’s thrown them really, really well, so we’re going to move forward that way and go get ready,” Lebby said.
Gabriel was recently ranked as one of the top-10 returning quarterbacks by Pro Football Focus. For good reason, too. Gabriel has thrown for 8,037 passing yards and 70 passing touchdowns over the course of this college career.
Lebby said Gabriel’s production is one thing that can’t be denied.
“Obviously, we’ve got a ton of history. It goes all the way back to me recruiting him out of Mililani High School. Going to Hawaii, being there for home visits, him having an official visit at UCF while I was there obviously with Heup. We’ve got a ton of history. I think that the great thing about him walking in the door right now. … There’s a couple of things, but, one is the production. The guy’s averaging over 300 yards a game, three touchdowns a game in 26 starts, so you can’t argue that piece of it,” Lebby said.
What Gabriel represents for a program in transition is equally if not more important for the Sooners. Gabriel understands Lebby’s offense, has a wealth of collegiate starts under his belt and knows what is required during an offseason in order to be successful.
“Probably the thing that I’m most excited about is this guy knows how to operate. He knows how to walk in the building every single day have great ownership in how he’s going to operate, how he’s going to take command of the offense and what it means to be a quarterback. To me, that is huge and that is critical as we set the tone and the standard of how we’re going to do things. With coach Venables and myself, the things that we’re going to do offensively, having that guy that can roll with it immediately and knows what to expect I think is huge. The transition’s been really good,” Lebby said.
Lebby and Oklahoma are counting on Gabriel to help with the offense’s installation and to set the expectations for this team among his teammates.
“The importance of him being here, his ability to be able to go coach the other quarterbacks and the other players without us around is a huge deal. I tell them all the time, ‘We’re in a race against ourself to be as good as we can possibly be before we get into spring ball.’ That’s got nothing to do with the football while we’re around, so how do we get that done? Well, it’s Dillon being able to be out there with those guys, coach them every single day and, again, understanding the expectation of how we’re going to operate once we get going in spring ball. It’s invaluable,” Lebby said.
The other exciting part for Lebby is Gabriel is a more experienced and a better quarterback today than he was when Lebby left for Ole Miss.
“I think the thing that I’ve seen from a growth standpoint with Dillon is, just like everything else, right, he’s lived it. He’s got that much more experience since I left him back two years ago. His production was really good in ’20. Obviously, he had the collarbone deal last year, but the things that I saw were him just being able to extend and create a little more. When he was a young guy, he wanted to be in the pocket. He wanted to throw from the pocket. That’s what he knew best, so he was getting the ball out of the hand. I think what you saw from his true sophomore year was is you saw him create a little more. You saw him extend a little more. And so, those are the things that we’re going to need. To obviously do things that we all can’t coach,” Lebby said.
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