If there is one central key to stopping a Lincoln Riley offense, Oklahoma expert Kegan Reneau has a very clear answer.
In our Riley Files podcast series from last year, Reneau stressed a central point: Adaptability means everything.
“TCU, you watched the Big 12, you followed it closely. TCU has not been a problem for Oklahoma (until the 2022 game, which occurred after this podcast was recorded in the summer of 2022). 2016 was a close game, but they (Sooners) put up a ton of points. My point here is that defense was Gary Patterson’s defense and they stuck to it. It was consistent. If you’re gonna continue to have the same tendencies, Lincoln’s gonna crush you. It’s just reality.
“He’s way too smart not to find your weak links. If you’re not gonna change or adjust, he’s gonna continue to crush you that way. That’s how I view a lot of the Big Ten, like Michigan’s defense and what I studied prior to the Orange Bowl game against Georgia, that’s what they ran. So when you’re a defensive mind like that, where you have a great foundation, great system, but if you can’t adjust, when you play a team like Oklahoma under Lincoln Riley, and you can’t adjust who you are too much, and you’re not super disruptive, that’s where it becomes a problem.”
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