With the sports world on pause due to the novel coronavirus, Lincoln Riley is experiencing an unprecedented event as Oklahoma’s head coach: the missing of spring practices.
In a radio interview on 107.7 The Franchise, Riley talked at length about the challenges ahead of him without being able to practice.
“I think you’ve got two sets of players. You’ve got your players that have been here, that know the systems, that understand what we’re trying to accomplish.” Riley said.” Now it doesn’t mean that they’ve got it all figured out or are at their peak, but they understand what they need to do to improve.” Riley said. “Then you have that group of guys, which are your signees that haven’t been here and then the signees that just got here in January that still are in the very early learning stages that you’ve got to spend a little more time with those guys right now because with this time off, they still don’t have a great grasp of everything.”
Riley explained that the school was allowed just four hours each week to be able engage with his athletes over applications like Zoom, a web-based conferencing tool.
“You’ve just got to do the best you can.” He said. “You’ve got to take advantage of the four hours each week of meetings with the players and you’ve got to be very organized in other things that you can send the players to be able to do, although you can’t monitor that. Then I think you’ve just got to — that’s where having depth and having competition at each spot is so important because it creates a sense of urgency even when guys are on their own right now — if I’m not working, if I’m not putting in the work, if I’m not getting better each day, somebody else is taking my job, or somebody else is passing me up. So we’ve tried to create that at all positions through recruiting, player development, just the way we’ve been able to run our program.”
Several Sooners entered the NFL draft following the 2019 season, and many starting spots will be wide-open for competition, including quarterback.
“Nobody’s promised anything, nobody’s given anything, they have to earn it.” Riley said. “Quarterback position’s no different. Yeah, I hate not having the reps with those guys but also very confident in them as players and their understanding of what we’re doing right now. I know they’re both, kind of on their own, putting in a bunch of work right now.”
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