Under Jeff Lebby, the Oklahoma Sooners are bringing back uptempo offense.
Speed kills. It’s an old adage in sports. Especially in the world of football. The impact that speed can have on a game is almost unquantifiable at times. For the Oklahoma Sooners, it’s not just about the players being fast themselves, it’s about operating their offense fast and wearing down opponents.
Oklahoma offensive coordinator [autotag]Jeff Lebby[/autotag] has made a name for himself over the last several years thanks productivity and explosive nature of his offenses. The uptempo offense Lebby ran last season in Oxford for the Ole Miss Rebels finished No. 6 in the nation, averaging 492.5 yards per game in 2021. He experienced similar results in Orlando while at UCF, where now Sooners starting quarterback [autotag]Dillon Gabriel[/autotag] first started in college.
Lebby’s offenses have a few foundational aspects to them and one of them is simply the rate at which they operate play-to-play. The week six matchup between Lebby’s Rebels and [autotag]Josh Heupel[/autotag]’s Tennessee Volunteers featured the two fastest teams in the Power Five in 2021. They were the top two teams in the country in plays per minute with the Rebels averaging 2.89 plays per minute in 2021.
On the season, they’d average 78.2 plays per game, No. 2 in the nation. That volume of plays at that type of breakneck pace will wear down any defense at any level. It’s just not possible for teams to perform well defensively if they don’t have the depth and the execution required to stop the offense. And those two areas are exactly what playing uptempo is trying to prey upon.
“The constant is the tempo,” Lebby said in his recent media appearance. “We’re going to play incredibly fast. We’re going to push the tempo. We’re going to dictate how the game is played. That’s where it starts for us.”
That’s why the Sooners will up the ante so to speak from Lincoln Riley’s more methodical, yet still highly productive offenses. It’s all about being the one in control and being proactive against defenses instead of calling games in reaction mode.
While the tempo will remain a focal point, other aspects of his offense will continue to evolve from the previous stops.
And for the Sooners, that may be okay. At times, former head coach and play-caller [autotag]Lincoln Riley[/autotag] struggled with getting the ball to his best players Whether that was getting [autotag]Marvin Mims[/autotag] more touches or running the ball more with Kennedy Brooks. Far too many times it seemed he overcomplicated things by not letting his best players touch the ball more.
One reason Lebby’s offenses have thrived is that they focus on getting their best offensive players the ball as much as they can. Couple that with the tempo at which he wants to play at, it isn’t a stretch to think the Oklahoma offense can be better than it was the last two seasons under Lincoln Riley.
Lebby expects the Sooners to be ready physically and mentally for the grind of the up-tempo life by day 15 of spring ball. A part of that will also be on the shoulders of [autotag]Jerry Schmidt[/autotag], who returned to Oklahoma after spending the last four years at Texas A&M as their director of Strength and Conditioning. Schmidt physically and mentally prepared the up-tempo Sooners of the Kevin Wilson and [autotag]Sam Bradford[/autotag] and will be tasked with doing it again under Jeff Lebby.
Sooners fans will get their first look at the new-look offense during the Oklahoma spring game on April 23rd.
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