ADVERTISEMENT

The offensive line….regression analysis says…injuries….program implications

Many years ago Phil Steele in his pre-season publication included an article that some stat guys did and they did regression analysis on every stat they could think of to determine the single best predictor in the pre-season of a teams projected won / loss record and it was cumulative returning offensive line starts. It was not even close. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

Cowboy76 and myself must have purchased that magazine when it first came out because we were both discussing here at the same time.

The implications of this are meaningful. This year we had a few games in which our online played together for a few games and our run game got going. It was the first time in 2 years that happened. We had a brief respite from injuries.

We went from injured OL at the start of the season, to some brief health, and back to injured.

When healthy, it appears our current OL Coach can coach and prepare the team for a game.

At the end of the season last year we had a walk on Frosh starting against OU and we got kicked. Yesterday, our starting RFrosh OL got abused by their 350LB monster NG. One guy getting manhandled on the OL is a serious problem, especially when it is happening every play.

What needs to happen?

1. Injuries - I believe injuries is the result of playing young guys before they are physically ready to play and older guys like Sills that comes in and starts from day 1 and never gets a breather and never gets subbed out unless they are injured. You get injured when tired. His body accumulated all of these wear and tear injuries and by the end of the season he is beat down and not playing his best. Sills was one tough SOB to make it thru these final games but no way did he play at 100% efficiency. How is this fixed? See below.

2. No one should be stepping on to that field to start unless they have had 2 years of solid weight training with Glass or Glass says they are strong enough to play the position. Exception being if we somehow recruited a stud that is ready day one. Anyone not physically ready to play is an injury waiting to happen or will get abused. I also think perhaps we need to include some flexibility training for our OL, just to see if that might help with all the injuries as well.

3. In order to survive any type of injury along the OL, we need a solid 2 deep. We had that at one time under Wick. At OSU that has been very hard to do. Maybe we get good technicians to Coach our OL but guys that are not great recruiters. We need one of Dickey or McEndoo to be an ACE recruiter and evaluator and at least one a great coaching technician. We have to recruit better, and then we have to combine it with great development, coaching, and retention. We seem to have retention down good, we can develop guys but tend to force them to start earlier than they should. We need fewer recruiting misses. Can they be helped by the occasional 4 star recruit? How can we do a better job of evaluation?

4. The OL needs to be 5 guys working together in perfect harmony to make a fist. It is the one unit that does need accumulated offensive starts together to become a unit. When we had depth Wick played musical chairs with those guys all spring and and even in camp before the season. He did it to keep guys motivated but I believe he did it so we were prepared for injuries and also it accelerated the process of becoming a unit because each guy on the line had a appreciation and understanding of the responsibilities of each position. You could then leverage your knowledge in your position, to make the other guys job easier when certain things happen on specific stunts and looks, etc…. This is how I believe Wick accelerated the accumulated OL starts, he accelerated the development of the unit via musical chairs. We need to steal this back from him and use it again.

5. I have seen some discussion of recruiting OL to fit your system. I think in developing any OL you want guys that can both run and pass block. To me that is the ideal spot to be in. Different defenses are going to present different challenges so you need to do both well. And if you can do this, it makes it harder for defenses to load up on your weakness. Build an OL that can run and pass block. Build your play book around the QB’s abilities. This means you can build plays and a game plan around a dual threat guy or a pocket passer. It all starts at the OL.

This appears to be the next step the program needs to take. Having a great budget for assistants gets you to the starting line to being able to implement a plan at a position group for group development.

4th and 1

What play do YOU run?

5 OL
1 CBB on the left (wing back spot)
1 QB in the pistol
1 RB behind
1 CBB to the right of SS
2 WR split right (Presley and Martin)

I’m running WR sweep.

Motion CBB to the left

Wing CBB washes, everyone blocks right and you have BP take a flip full speed with Dez and whoever (Barr?) as two lead blockers.

Touchdown.

Life in the 400 section on AT&T Stadium

Wild.

It was a three hour preview of our dystopian post apocalyptic future.

Fighting for your life in an elevated Thunder Dome with wayward Baptists who had forsaken their religion.

I got in a couple of shoving matches because I run my mouth at the game the same way I do on message boards.

I'm glad I got away alive. Would definitely do again. You ain't ever lived until you do your time in the 400 zone

Might post at least one pic later on today.

I just had someone send me this about Lincoln Riley.

Can you all help me understand this? Her Twitter seems to back up this issue. I have no idea who this Stroud person is. Here you go:


Lincoln Is ****ed

From a friend:

Annie Hanson stuff is all true.

They sent Riley a breach of contract non filed law suit. They are checking the temp on his response.

Going to serve USC and Riley on Christmas Day. Tortious interference with commerce, defamation, slander, tampering, breach of contract, interstate commerce issues, and because it's a state employee the state of Oklahoma can get involved.

Hitting usc with essentially a walk away agreement of like $10mm.

The theory is they will show USC that the Annie Hanson evidence and Riley cheating and all the Clarke Stroud back story will come up in discovery and there is no way USC is going to want their new coach with about $100mm guaranteed contract to have evidence in open record of him cheating on his wife and some other stuff.

They were able to show enough **** from text and wife's cell phone (which was a school phone) tbat they knew and were planning all of this.

Plus the illicit texts.

Stoops announcing it or least getting it all out there is early is awesome.

Everyone love Annie Hanson and they want to keep her too
From a friend:

Rented out Broadway 10 in OKC. Private party tonight. No press.

Plan as of right now is Stoops will announce or OU media relationship will announce tomorrow morning on espn and big noon kickoff.

Nice jab at the Big 12.

We want everyone talking about it all day. We know college football fans watch it and so do recruits.

Tons and tons on the pending law suit with Lincoln Riley and usc that I can't discuss in writing. But we have them dead to ****ing center and OU will hit usc with a settlement agreement in a week or two.

Can't fire Annie Hanson. Afraid of a wrongful termination law suit. They have a settle agreement in place and a non defamation of character agreement in place if she wants to stay. OU happy to have her stay but won't be sad if she opts out.

All formal contracts are drafted but still don't know name. Was told they will just insert names snd then get it inked when they know.
ADVERTISEMENT

Filter

ADVERTISEMENT