Jeckyl and Hyde Coaching Staff

[FaninAma]

Now I know it's a given that all teams play much better at home than they do on the road butI don't think there's a program that exhibits the extremes of this rule more than OU does. Looking back over the Stoops era it becomes glaringly obvious that his teams play much looser and much more agressively at home. Most of our non-Baylor road games seem to always end up being very close, nail-biting affairs.

This begs the question as to why this has become the MO for this coaching staff. I feel like the 2000 OB was the blue print that Stoops uses for road games....conservative play calling in all aspects of the game, avoid mistakes and try to win with defense.

Not a bad plan, unless you consider that OU probably has lost about 1 of 3 of their tougher road games since the 2000 season and usually the other 2 games are nail biters. Again, you need to throw Big 12 bottom feeders like Iowa State and Baylor out of the equation.

Next, if you believe Stoops, and I do, then you would have to assume he is telling the truth that his team wants to compete for the national title every single year. If that is one of the major goals of the program year in and year out then one would think that Stoops and his coaching staff would reevaluate how they approach road games when their current approach almost always guarantees at least one road loss a year.

And I can accept the premise that I'm way off base here but I have no other expalnation for the differnce in the way the OU coaching staff approaches home and away games. And i think the entire team takes their cue from the coaching staff's "play not to lose" philosophy and they play very tentatively on the road.

[boomersooner28]

We've only "blown-out" 3 opponents on the road in the big 12 since Stoops has taken over. A win is a win, BUT when you play it tight to the vest on the road in conference, all it takes is a couple errors to get beat on any given Saturday, ala last Saturday.

[mrjeffmaxwell]

I'm glad Bob Stoops doesn't have enough time on his hands to read some of the rough you guys are pulling out of a stack of diamonds.

[Blues1]

We are all here to express some kind of opinion - When we Win we talked about how great it is - When we lose we all need to vent - or have some opinion on why we lost...The very fact we jump on each other when we lose just shows how frustrated we all get when our Sooners go down in defeat..My opinion is those of us who jump on other posters for expressing their feelings or thoughts are still just as MAD about the loss as the one posting.....:)
Thats why you gotta Keep Rockin' - ;)
BOOMER SOONER....!!!!

[soonerhubs]

Thread merger... where art thou?

[OUTrumpet]

We've only "blown-out" 3 opponents on the road in the big 12 since Stoops has taken over. A win is a win, BUT when you play it tight to the vest on the road in conference, all it takes is a couple errors to get beat on any given Saturday, ala last Saturday.

3 opponents? I can think of Tech (01, 03) KU (01) ISU (03) Baylor (02, 04, 06)

I can think of a lot more where we get up by a lot and let them back in it though.

[Widescreen]

3 opponents? I can think of Tech (01, 03) KU (01) ISU (03) Baylor (02, 04, 06)

I can think of a lot more where we get up by a lot and let them back in it though.
He said to take ISU and Baylor out of the equation.

[sooner n houston]

A couple of Cotton bowl games come to mind as well! :D

[RedGiant]

This is a great game plan when you don't have a defense that is porous and prone to be out of position coupled with a coordinator that is so incompetent he can't adjust to what the offense might come up with during half-time. That coupled with a Big Ten run game coordinator for the offensive guru is a recipe for a lot of,"Did I do Thaaaat!"

[stoopified]

Now I know it's a given that all teams play much better at home than they do on the road butI don't think there's a program that exhibits the extremes of this rule more than OU does. Looking back over the Stoops era it becomes glaringly obvious that his teams play much looser and much more agressively at home. Most of our non-Baylor road games seem to always end up being very close, nail-biting affairs.

This begs the question as to why this has become the MO for this coaching staff. I feel like the 2000 OB was the blue print that Stoops uses for road games....conservative play calling in all aspects of the game, avoid mistakes and try to win with defense.

Not a bad plan, unless you consider that OU probably has lost about 1 of 3 of their tougher road games since the 2000 season and usually the other 2 games are nail biters. Again, you need to throw Big 12 bottom feeders like Iowa State and Baylor out of the equation.

Next, if you believe Stoops, and I do, then you would have to assume he is telling the truth that his team wants to compete for the national title every single year. If that is one of the major goals of the program year in and year out then one would think that Stoops and his coaching staff would reevaluate how they approach road games when their current approach almost always guarantees at least one road loss a year.

And I can accept the premise that I'm way off base here but I have no other expalnation for the differnce in the way the OU coaching staff approaches home and away games. And i think the entire team takes their cue from the coaching staff's "play not to lose" philosophy and they play very tentatively on the road.Can't say I really disagree with what you are saying.In fact I have ften said I don't like the tactic of getting a half time lead and spending the second half trying to literally RUN OUT THE CLOCK.It almost bit us against Baylor acouple years ago(2ot win),Nu(31-24 win(couple of years ago)aTm last year(17-16 W),osu(27-21 win).None of those games should have been that close.

Here is where I part company with many critics(not necssarily you,faninama).Bob is OUrcoach and I trust him to make the RIGHT call on staff,playcalling,gameplanning and everything else involved in running a top flight football program.

I loved Barry too but had many more issues with his coaching than I have with Bob's but in the end THEY BOTH GOT THE JOB DONE.Just because we disagree with how it gets done doesn't change the end result and it CERTAINLY does NOT change how Bob is going to do his job'

In the end all we do is watch what happens(good or bad) and talk,type about it.Beyond that all we can do is trust that Bo and staff will make what changes,if any that need to be made.Rest assured FaninAma,I feel your pain and frustration as it burns inside me too.

[Stoop Dawg]

And i think the entire team takes their cue from the coaching staff's "play not to lose" philosophy and they play very tentatively on the road.

Remember when we used to run fake field goals and other "trick plays" on the road? Remember all the threads about Bob having balls the size of, well, something really large? I guess when you only run a handful of plays in the second half you don't have an opportunity to do much.

[FaninAma]

Remember when we used to run fake field goals and other "trick plays" on the road? Remember all the threads about Bob having balls the size of, well, something really large? I guess when you only run a handful of plays in the second half you don't have an opportunity to do much.

I think the trick plays, even if they don't work, instill a differnt attitude into theplayers. They take their cues from the coaching staff and if the coaching staff is uptight and tentative, the players are uptight and tentative.

BTW, isn't Mike Stoops the one who usually talked Bob into taking a few more chances on the road? That's why I started the "How Bob Lost His Mojo" thread.

[handcrafted]

I really have to agree with Ama on this one. And the conservative-ness on the road has gotten worse since Mike left. I don't think it's an issue of the defense per se (although we do seem to be out of position a lot more), Bob knows the D, esp. the secondary which was his position as a player.

I think that Mike did bring some mojo to this team. And I think Bob's got to recapture that. The team will feed off the coaching staff if they abandon the "get a somewhat big lead and run clock" idea. Right now, they're like a soccer team in the World Cup scoring a goal right before halftime and then packing in their defense for the whole second half. It only works if you are really really that much better than the other team. Trouble is, in college football right now (at least in the major conferences), nobody is that much better than the other team.

You can never, ever, take your foot off the other team's neck until you're up by 50. Period. We should play that way all the time, no matter what stadium we are in.

[Sooner Eclipse]

I think the trick plays, even if they don't work, instill a differnt attitude into theplayers. They take their cues from the coaching staff and if the coaching staff is uptight and tentative, the players are uptight and tentative.

BTW, isn't Mike Stoops the one who usually talked Bob into taking a few more chances on the road? That's why I started the "How Bob Lost His Mojo" thread.

I think this is in great part the problem people have now with Stoops. I saw a little of the old Stoops in the A&M game last year. We tried the unexpected onside kick and it didn't work. Big deal, he's going for the kill. At the end he elects to go for 4th and inches backed up in our own end of the field.

Bob has a problem in that he fundamentally trusts his defenses more than his offenses lately. But the trick plays require trust in the offense to get it done. Given a tight game, I would much rather lose the game by trying to keep possession on a gadget or ballsy call than kick and play defense. It's always riskier because you don't have control. Bob for some reason feels he can control the game with defense. With todays offenses, I don't think that can be done.

[ougrad2008]

with CU loading up the box, i think just having bradford throw on first down more...or especially taking a few shots downfield, may have loosened them up a bit. the zero attempts to MK is a mystery, as well as the zero attempts downfield.

[OklahomaRed]

Way too conservative on the road. Colorado is not a national power, or really even a Big 12 power. To lose in the fashion we lost causes me to question tactics. Not to question who we have as our head coach, but to simply question why we did some of the stuff we did in that game. If we could have taken a couple of drives down early in the 3rd quarter we would have eliminated the home field advantage. There for a second I think the fans were ready to start packing it up and going off to smoke their bongs; BUT, we let them back in the game with conservative play calling and a lack of imagination on the road. We got a new coach at my son's high school this year. We beat Amarillo High for the first time ever the first game of the year. The new coach kicked an onside kick the very first play of the game. I immediately fell in love with the new coach. You gotta love big balls in a coach who is not afraid to come out and at least try to kick someone right in the teeth. You can not tell me the players don't feed off of that. My son's high school team is 4-1 this year. They should be 5-0. If they would have kept the old coach who was not full of "**** and vinegar" lke the new coach, I can promise you they would be 1-4 or something. It's nice to see the kids out there flying around and busting bigger teams right in the mouth. You can not tell me that the coach's attitude does not rub off on the players. O.U. came out conservative and they stayed that way the entire game. Get out there and kick some !!@@. :D

[Stoop Dawg]

Remember when we used to run fake field goals and other "trick plays" on the road? Remember all the threads about Bob having balls the size of, well, something really large? I guess when you only run a handful of plays in the second half you don't have an opportunity to do much.

Just to clarify, this is not a criticizm of Bob. Dude has more football knowledge in his left pinky than I will accumulate in my entire lifetime. I'm just saying that, as a fan, I like to see the "ballsy" plays. IMO, it's what makes the game fun.

I noticed early in the game that on one of our punts they didn't go after the punter at all. EVERYONE ran the other way. We could have run for a 1st easily. I'm not sure it was there all game, and we didn't really have an "opportunity" to punt late in the game what with all the turnovers, but those are the kinds of things I'd like to see when the O is struggling. Rather than keep running it up the gut hoping it will eventually start working, do something unexpected. I liked the deep ball on first down, too bad it was well covered and overthrown. Still, it was an attempt.

[trpltongue]

I really wish one of the reporters would ask Bob why he didn't call timeout after CO's 3rd down play with ~25 seconds left. At least give our kick return team and Hartley a chance to tie the game.

I've read that the reporters asked him if he thought about calling a timeout to ice the kicker to which he basically replied "I thought about it but didn't think it would make a difference".

That's fine and dandy, but calling a timeout with 25 seconds left WOULD have made a difference. Not that our offense was doing anything, but Hartley was easily blasting field goals from 70 yrds out.

I don't mind conservative play calling when you have the lead, but not calling timeout just reeks of giving up. Either he gave up on the team, or he just had a mental error, but I'd at least like him to answer the question.

Hopefully somebody will have the stones to ask him after practice today and he won't give some crappy coachspeak answer.

[aurorasooner]

with CU loading up the box, I haven't watched the replay of game, so I really don't know, but I don't think CU loaded the box, but I think they did run to the point of attack almost instantly from the snap. I think they either game-planned our predictable offensive play calling really well and found some predictable keys to our offensive play tendencies by formation or they pulled a New England Patriots on us. They ran to the point of attack just like the Boise State defense did. Even on that play were Bradford dropped back looked to the left then reversed & threw that flat-screen pass to the right, the CU defense was all over it. JMHO, but I think KW got some serious predictable tendency by formation issues that need to assessed by someone looking in from the outside.

[JohnnyMack]

I don't think it's a home/road problem as much as it seems to be turning into a Pre-Saxet/Post-Saxet problem.

2006 pre-Saxet losses = Oregon

2007 pre-Saxet losses = CU

We held late double digit leads that evaporated because of the scheme we were running defensively.

[TexasEx4OU]

BTW, isn't Mike Stoops the one who usually talked Bob into taking a few more chances on the road? That's why I started the "How Bob Lost His Mojo" thread.

As has been pointed out, I don't think we miss Mike's schemes as much as we miss his aggression. I'd be willing to bet that during those sideline debates re: taking chances, Mike was the one in Bob's ear saying, "Hell, yeah...go for it! If you don't make it, my D will hold'em!"

Much in the same way negative momentum can snow ball like it did this past Saturday, players can also feed off of that type of aggressive attitude.