milesl
10/11/2008, 03:45 AM
Known for his D, Stoops has turned OU into an offensive dynamo
Story Highlights
Bob Stoops is a defensive-minded coach, but OU has succeeded with offense
Entering Saturday's Red River Shootout, OU is averaging 540 yards per game
Sophomore QB Sam Bradford is accurate, efficient and a Heisman contender
Sam Bradford
Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford has completed 72.6 percent of his passes with 18 touchdowns and three interceptions for the No. 1 Sooners.
Getty Images
By Stewart Mandel, SI.com
Bob Stoops is a defensive-minded coach. Or so we're told.
Oklahoma's 48-year-old head coach was an All-Big Ten defensive back at Iowa, a defensive backs coach at Kansas State and a defensive coordinator first for the Wildcats and then Florida. When the Sooners practice, Stoops usually starts off at a vantage point where he can watch his entire team before inevitably drifting like a magnet to hover over the secondary. It's in his blood.
When Oklahoma reasserted itself on the national stage at the start of this decade, winning the 2000 BCS championship and playing for two more titles over the next four years, Stoops' program took on the identity of its architect: A gritty, swarming defensive team that produced an assembly line of All-America defenders -- linebackers Rocky Calmus and Teddy Lehman, defensive backs Roy Williams and Derrick Strait and defensive tackle Tommie Harris.
Yet as Stoops' top-ranked Sooners enter Saturday's Red River Shootout with No. 5 Texas, they do so boasting one of the nation's most powerful offenses. Oklahoma ranks fourth nationally in scoring (49.6 points per game) and passing offense (361 yards per game) and fifth in total offense (540 yards per game).
This is not a new development. Seven times in Stoops' first nine seasons, the Sooners have finished among the top 20 nationally in points per game, including five times in the top 10. They've done so under the direction of four different offensive coordinators (Mike Leach, Mark Mangino, Chuck Long and Kevin Wilson), the first three of whom have gone on to head-coaching jobs.
"Regardless of who the coordinators are, Bob's running that program," says Texas coach Mack Brown. "[OU's offense] is going to have his stamp on it.
The Sooners have sustained their offensive success even as the names on the jerseys have changed. As Stoops likes to point out: "We've won five Big 12 championships with five different quarterbacks."
Oklahoma's current star signal-caller, Sam Bradford, was the nation's most efficient quarterback last season and set an NCAA freshman record for touchdown passes (36). The redshirt sophomore -- who has completed 72.6 percent of his passes with 18 touchdowns and three interceptions -- is well on his way to becoming the third Stoops' quarterback to be invited to the Heisman Trophy festivities since the turn of the millennium. (Josh Heupel finished second in 2000; Jason White won in '03 and finished third in '04.) None of this would be possible if Stoops coached like ... a defensive coach.
"Some guys are just worried about time of possession and eating the clock and playing close to the vest," said Heupel, now OU's quarterbacks coach. "That is not coach Stoops at all."
Stoops is not the one calling the plays on Saturdays. He rarely sits in on offensive meetings during the week. But his coaches and players know well his vision for an aggressive, balanced offense -- a philosophy molded by someone he once coached for and someone he coached against.
Ask Wilson, Oklahoma's current offensive coordinator, what kind of offense the Sooners run and he can't provide a simple answer. It's impossible to tag OU's attack with one label. They run the spread, but not exclusively. They line up Bradford in the shotgun, but, unlike most shotgun QBs, he doesn't run. They line up in the I-formation, sometimes to run, sometimes for play-action. Some years (like when Adrian Peterson was in the backfield), they've been more of a running team. Some years, like this one, they're more of a passing team. "I don't know what we are," says Wilson. "We do a lot, and we try to be physical."
Stoops' offense didn't start out that way. As he says, "It's been an evolution."
Stoops arrived at Oklahoma in December 1998 following a three-year stint as defensive coordinator for renowned Florida coach Steve Spurrier. At one point a coaching friend asked Stoops whether it daunted him to work for a guy whose quick-strike offense often kept the Gators defense on the field too long.
"I said no -- they can't score fast enough for me," said Stoops. "That's always been my mentality as well -- to score as often and as quickly as you can. You go up 21-0, that presses the other team, too."
Stoops inherited an Oklahoma squad that had gone 12-22 the previous three seasons. "We didn't have a quarterback on campus," said Stoops. "Along with that, I didn't feel we were physically imposing with personnel."
Having faced Hal Mumme's pass-happy Kentucky teams the prior two seasons -- games in which the Wildcats averaged 31.5 points and QB Tim Couch attempted a combined 120 passes for 754 yards -- Stoops hired Mumme's long-time assistant, Mike Leach, to be his first offensive coordinator. The hope was that Leach's passer-friendly offense would attract quarterback recruits and "allow us to move the ball without beating people up," Stoops said.
Stoops' first class of signees in February 1999 included Heupel, a juco transfer from Snow, Utah, and White, a high-schooler from Tuttle, Okla. They, along with Georgia transfer Nate Hybl, would become the starting quarterbacks for Stoops' first six teams. Meanwhile, Stoops' first team reached the Independence Bowl while ranking eighth nationally in scoring offense and ninth in passing offense. It was a dramatic transformation for a program once synonymous with the wishbone.
When Leach left after the season to become the head coach at Texas Tech, Stoops promoted offensive line coach Mark Mangino -- the two had worked together at Kansas State -- and the Sooners began their transformation to a more balanced offensive approach. While Heupel became the offensive face of OU's 2000 national-title team, throwing for 3,392 yards and 20 touchdowns, tailback Quentin Griffin took on a bigger role late in the season. Griffin rushed for 3,471 yards over a three-year period (2000-02).
"As the years went by, we got better and better linemen, better tight ends and more physical running backs," Stoops said. "This comes back to my defensive mentality and belief in being physical -- I felt we could run the football while still passing the ball well."
Another important recruit during that time was Wilson, who became the "run-game coordinator" alongside offensive coordinator Chuck Long following Mangino's departure to Kansas in 2002. Wilson came from Northwestern, where he and coach Randy Walker were among the first to install a shotgun-spread offense centered around the running game (the Rich Rodriguez variety).
Wilson added a shotgun-running component to OU's spread, but in the second game of the year, when White suffered his second-straight season-ending knee injury, the staff mostly scrapped the shotgun for a more traditional power-running attack. Griffin rushed for 1,884 yards as the Sooners earned a Rose Bowl berth. Largely unheralded two-year starter Hybl was named Rose Bowl MVP in a win over Washington State.
White returned as starter in 2003 having lost most of his mobility following two reconstructive surgeries, so OU re-instituted the shotgun. With the help of a stout offensive line anchored by future Outland winner Jammal Brown and a deep receiving corps led by future first-rounder Mark Clayton, the previously unsung White exploded for 3,846 yards and 40 touchdowns, leading the Sooners to a 12-0 start and becoming OU's first Heisman winner since 1978.
However, the lack of a running game eventually caught up to the Sooners. Coupled with a finger injury to White, OU lost both the Big 12 championship game against Kansas State and the BCS championship game against LSU.
The answer to the Sooners' running woes arrived the next year in the form of all-everything recruit and future NFL Pro Bowler Peterson, and once again, OU's coaches adjusted accordingly. White moved back under center in '04 and passed for 3,205 yards while the freshman Peterson ran for 1,925.
"[The offensive coaches] do a great job of figuring out what our strengths are and playing to them," Stoops said. "The quarterbacks have all been very accurate, all tough, good players. We've played to their strengths as well as running the football."
The Sooners once again started 12-0 that 2004 season before suffering a humbling 55-19 national-title loss to USC. What followed were the two most challenging seasons for Stoops' offense.
With an inconsistent redshirt freshman quarterback, Rhett Bomar, an entirely new offensive line and young receivers, OU lost three of its first five games en route to an 8-4 season. Then, on the eve of 2006 fall camp, Bomar was dismissed for accepting extra benefits from a local car dealership. Paul Thompson, a fifth-year senior who had spent the past year at receiver, was moved back to quarterback. Making matters worse, Peterson wound up missing seven games with a collarbone injury.
In spite of all that, the Sooners won 11 games and another Big 12 championship in what many called the best coaching job of Stoops' career. Heading into 2007, however, pundits wondered how OU would handle an apparent void at quarterback following Bomar's dismissal and Thompson's graduation.
Even Stoops didn't realize a potential star was waiting in the wings.
It is hard to comprehend now, but just 14 months ago, Bradford was one of three unheralded competitors for Oklahoma's starting quarterback job, along with juco transfer Joey Halzle and true freshman Keith Nichol (who's since transferred to Michigan State).
Bradford, an Oklahoma City native, largely flew under the radar as a recruit. Rivals.com and Scout.com both listed him as a three-star prospect. Long, now the coach at San Diego State, had become a fan of Bradford's when he participated in OU's summer camps, and Stoops and Wilson were impressed with his athleticism. In high school, the 6-foot-4 Bradford excelled in both basketball and golf as well.
"He's a lot more athletic than people realize," Wilson said. "[Former OU basketball coach Kelvin] Sampson thought he could play here. A year ago, he shot 63 at a municipal course."
Still, the coaches weren't sure what to expect when Bradford took the field for the first time last fall. They put him in the shotgun, kept the playbook fairly simple and anticipated relying on his ability to throw on the run. In his first four collegiate starts, Bradford completed 78.1 percent of his passes while throwing 14 touchdowns and just two interceptions. OU averaged 61.5 points in those games, highlighted by a 51-13 rout of Miami.
"When we played Miami, we knew they were going to come after us," Wilson said. "He played so calm and so within himself. He handled a lot of things mentally as a freshman better than I've seen some seniors who were great players."
The coaches added more wrinkles to the game plan every week and watched Bradford continue to excel, often showing a veteran's ability to go through as many as four or five progressions on a given play.
Bradford's freshman season wasn't entirely flawless -- he struggled in his first Big 12 road start, a 27-24 loss at Colorado, and threw a costly interception in the end zone in the Sooners' Fiesta Bowl defeat to West Virginia. However, in leading OU to another 11-win season and Big 12 championship, he finished the season as the nation's top-rated passer, putting up numbers (a 69.5 completion percentage, 3,121 yards, 36 touchdowns and eight interceptions) that impressed even him.
"Obviously, I had confidence in myself and knew if I went in there and played the way the coaches wanted me to play, I'd do well," Bradford said. "But there were times after the season, I'd look back and go, 'Wow ... did that really just happen?' "
With a more veteran unit surrounding Bradford this season -- five returning starters on the offensive line (including preseason All-America guard Duke Robinson), senior receivers Juaquin Iglesias and Manuel Johnson, junior tight end Jermaine Gresham, junior tailback Chris Brown and sophomore DeMarco Murray -- OU's coaches let fly their full playbook from Day 1. They also added a new wrinkle. At the end of last season, Stoops asked Wilson to implement a no-huddle attack, an increasingly popular tactic in the Big 12 that Wilson first used at Northwestern eight years ago.
The results so far: Five straight lopsided victories (against Chattanooga, Cincinnati, Washington, TCU and Baylor), with Bradford throwing for four or more touchdowns three times and notching at least 300 yards each of the past four games. Murray and Brown have averaged a combined 148.8 rushing yards.
How versatile is Oklahoma's offense? On their first offensive series of last week's 49-17 win at Baylor, the Sooners lined up in a shotgun, one-back set and, on the third play, Bradford hit a wide-open Johnson for a 53-yard touchdown. On their next possession, they switched to the I-formation and ran the ball on seven of the nine plays in a 63-yard touchdown drive. From there OU switched between the shotgun and the I-formation, often mixing in two tight end sets or lining up two backs in the shotgun, all while operating without a huddle.
"The beauty of our offense is the ability to do a lot of different things with a lot of different groupings," Wilson said. "It's multiple in looks and multiple in the ability to run and pass."
Bradford said he's come to expect a familiar play-calling strategy from the coaches. "Usually [Wilson] will start out trying to get me into a rhythm, whether it's plays I've told coach Heupel I'm more comfortable running or plays that have worked in the past," the quarterback said. "But once I get going, we get into all the stuff we've talked about during the week."
Bradford also has a certain, comforting voice in his ear on the sideline. "Coach Stoops will come and talk to me during the course of the game," Bradford said. "As a defensive coach, he can recognize what they're doing on defense. If he sees something, he'll let me know. From the emotional standpoint of the game, he's really good about saying 'Go out there, stay calm, have fun.'"
On Saturday, the Sooners face a significant step up in competition, but Texas knows well the difficulties of stopping Stoops' best offenses. In 2000, Heupel led a 63-14 rout of the 'Horns. In '03, White engineered a 65-13 blowout. Last year, Bradford went 21-of-32 for 244 yards and three touchdowns, including a go-ahead 35-yarder to Malcolm Kelly in the fourth quarter of a 28-21 OU victory.
"To [Oklahoma's] credit, they've stayed ahead of the game," said Texas coach Brown. "They've gone from running the Mike Leach offense to lining up in the I and running the ball a lot to running an up-tempo offense that's really giving people problems. They've really kept up with trends in college football."
Yet for all the offensive accolades and gaudy statistics, Stoops' program still encounters two unwanted perceptions -- one real, one outdated.
It's no secret the Sooners have gained a reputation for laying an egg in their recent BCS bowl appearances. They've lost four straight BCS matchups: the 2004 Sugar to LSU, the 2005 Orange to Oklahoma, the 2007 Fiesta to Boise State and the 2008 Fiesta to West Virginia.
Yet somehow, Oklahoma's reputation as a defensive team remains in tact -- this despite the fact that breakdowns on that side of the ball were primarily responsible for OU's past three bowl defeats. While the Sooners' defense has remained consistently respectable, never ranking outside the top 25 nationally this decade, it hasn't been as dominant the past five years as it was during its 2000-03 apex, when Stoops' brother Mike was co-coordinator and its average national ranking was sixth.
OU's offense, on the other hand, has never been more productive than it has over the past two seasons, averaging 44.2 points and 472.9 yards in the 19 games Bradford has started.
"It seems like people still think of us more defensively, but offensively, we've been fairly consistent as well," Stoops said. "Have we gotten the recognition [on offense]? I don't know. But I'm not complaining."
Story Highlights
Bob Stoops is a defensive-minded coach, but OU has succeeded with offense
Entering Saturday's Red River Shootout, OU is averaging 540 yards per game
Sophomore QB Sam Bradford is accurate, efficient and a Heisman contender
Sam Bradford
Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford has completed 72.6 percent of his passes with 18 touchdowns and three interceptions for the No. 1 Sooners.
Getty Images
By Stewart Mandel, SI.com
Bob Stoops is a defensive-minded coach. Or so we're told.
Oklahoma's 48-year-old head coach was an All-Big Ten defensive back at Iowa, a defensive backs coach at Kansas State and a defensive coordinator first for the Wildcats and then Florida. When the Sooners practice, Stoops usually starts off at a vantage point where he can watch his entire team before inevitably drifting like a magnet to hover over the secondary. It's in his blood.
When Oklahoma reasserted itself on the national stage at the start of this decade, winning the 2000 BCS championship and playing for two more titles over the next four years, Stoops' program took on the identity of its architect: A gritty, swarming defensive team that produced an assembly line of All-America defenders -- linebackers Rocky Calmus and Teddy Lehman, defensive backs Roy Williams and Derrick Strait and defensive tackle Tommie Harris.
Yet as Stoops' top-ranked Sooners enter Saturday's Red River Shootout with No. 5 Texas, they do so boasting one of the nation's most powerful offenses. Oklahoma ranks fourth nationally in scoring (49.6 points per game) and passing offense (361 yards per game) and fifth in total offense (540 yards per game).
This is not a new development. Seven times in Stoops' first nine seasons, the Sooners have finished among the top 20 nationally in points per game, including five times in the top 10. They've done so under the direction of four different offensive coordinators (Mike Leach, Mark Mangino, Chuck Long and Kevin Wilson), the first three of whom have gone on to head-coaching jobs.
"Regardless of who the coordinators are, Bob's running that program," says Texas coach Mack Brown. "[OU's offense] is going to have his stamp on it.
The Sooners have sustained their offensive success even as the names on the jerseys have changed. As Stoops likes to point out: "We've won five Big 12 championships with five different quarterbacks."
Oklahoma's current star signal-caller, Sam Bradford, was the nation's most efficient quarterback last season and set an NCAA freshman record for touchdown passes (36). The redshirt sophomore -- who has completed 72.6 percent of his passes with 18 touchdowns and three interceptions -- is well on his way to becoming the third Stoops' quarterback to be invited to the Heisman Trophy festivities since the turn of the millennium. (Josh Heupel finished second in 2000; Jason White won in '03 and finished third in '04.) None of this would be possible if Stoops coached like ... a defensive coach.
"Some guys are just worried about time of possession and eating the clock and playing close to the vest," said Heupel, now OU's quarterbacks coach. "That is not coach Stoops at all."
Stoops is not the one calling the plays on Saturdays. He rarely sits in on offensive meetings during the week. But his coaches and players know well his vision for an aggressive, balanced offense -- a philosophy molded by someone he once coached for and someone he coached against.
Ask Wilson, Oklahoma's current offensive coordinator, what kind of offense the Sooners run and he can't provide a simple answer. It's impossible to tag OU's attack with one label. They run the spread, but not exclusively. They line up Bradford in the shotgun, but, unlike most shotgun QBs, he doesn't run. They line up in the I-formation, sometimes to run, sometimes for play-action. Some years (like when Adrian Peterson was in the backfield), they've been more of a running team. Some years, like this one, they're more of a passing team. "I don't know what we are," says Wilson. "We do a lot, and we try to be physical."
Stoops' offense didn't start out that way. As he says, "It's been an evolution."
Stoops arrived at Oklahoma in December 1998 following a three-year stint as defensive coordinator for renowned Florida coach Steve Spurrier. At one point a coaching friend asked Stoops whether it daunted him to work for a guy whose quick-strike offense often kept the Gators defense on the field too long.
"I said no -- they can't score fast enough for me," said Stoops. "That's always been my mentality as well -- to score as often and as quickly as you can. You go up 21-0, that presses the other team, too."
Stoops inherited an Oklahoma squad that had gone 12-22 the previous three seasons. "We didn't have a quarterback on campus," said Stoops. "Along with that, I didn't feel we were physically imposing with personnel."
Having faced Hal Mumme's pass-happy Kentucky teams the prior two seasons -- games in which the Wildcats averaged 31.5 points and QB Tim Couch attempted a combined 120 passes for 754 yards -- Stoops hired Mumme's long-time assistant, Mike Leach, to be his first offensive coordinator. The hope was that Leach's passer-friendly offense would attract quarterback recruits and "allow us to move the ball without beating people up," Stoops said.
Stoops' first class of signees in February 1999 included Heupel, a juco transfer from Snow, Utah, and White, a high-schooler from Tuttle, Okla. They, along with Georgia transfer Nate Hybl, would become the starting quarterbacks for Stoops' first six teams. Meanwhile, Stoops' first team reached the Independence Bowl while ranking eighth nationally in scoring offense and ninth in passing offense. It was a dramatic transformation for a program once synonymous with the wishbone.
When Leach left after the season to become the head coach at Texas Tech, Stoops promoted offensive line coach Mark Mangino -- the two had worked together at Kansas State -- and the Sooners began their transformation to a more balanced offensive approach. While Heupel became the offensive face of OU's 2000 national-title team, throwing for 3,392 yards and 20 touchdowns, tailback Quentin Griffin took on a bigger role late in the season. Griffin rushed for 3,471 yards over a three-year period (2000-02).
"As the years went by, we got better and better linemen, better tight ends and more physical running backs," Stoops said. "This comes back to my defensive mentality and belief in being physical -- I felt we could run the football while still passing the ball well."
Another important recruit during that time was Wilson, who became the "run-game coordinator" alongside offensive coordinator Chuck Long following Mangino's departure to Kansas in 2002. Wilson came from Northwestern, where he and coach Randy Walker were among the first to install a shotgun-spread offense centered around the running game (the Rich Rodriguez variety).
Wilson added a shotgun-running component to OU's spread, but in the second game of the year, when White suffered his second-straight season-ending knee injury, the staff mostly scrapped the shotgun for a more traditional power-running attack. Griffin rushed for 1,884 yards as the Sooners earned a Rose Bowl berth. Largely unheralded two-year starter Hybl was named Rose Bowl MVP in a win over Washington State.
White returned as starter in 2003 having lost most of his mobility following two reconstructive surgeries, so OU re-instituted the shotgun. With the help of a stout offensive line anchored by future Outland winner Jammal Brown and a deep receiving corps led by future first-rounder Mark Clayton, the previously unsung White exploded for 3,846 yards and 40 touchdowns, leading the Sooners to a 12-0 start and becoming OU's first Heisman winner since 1978.
However, the lack of a running game eventually caught up to the Sooners. Coupled with a finger injury to White, OU lost both the Big 12 championship game against Kansas State and the BCS championship game against LSU.
The answer to the Sooners' running woes arrived the next year in the form of all-everything recruit and future NFL Pro Bowler Peterson, and once again, OU's coaches adjusted accordingly. White moved back under center in '04 and passed for 3,205 yards while the freshman Peterson ran for 1,925.
"[The offensive coaches] do a great job of figuring out what our strengths are and playing to them," Stoops said. "The quarterbacks have all been very accurate, all tough, good players. We've played to their strengths as well as running the football."
The Sooners once again started 12-0 that 2004 season before suffering a humbling 55-19 national-title loss to USC. What followed were the two most challenging seasons for Stoops' offense.
With an inconsistent redshirt freshman quarterback, Rhett Bomar, an entirely new offensive line and young receivers, OU lost three of its first five games en route to an 8-4 season. Then, on the eve of 2006 fall camp, Bomar was dismissed for accepting extra benefits from a local car dealership. Paul Thompson, a fifth-year senior who had spent the past year at receiver, was moved back to quarterback. Making matters worse, Peterson wound up missing seven games with a collarbone injury.
In spite of all that, the Sooners won 11 games and another Big 12 championship in what many called the best coaching job of Stoops' career. Heading into 2007, however, pundits wondered how OU would handle an apparent void at quarterback following Bomar's dismissal and Thompson's graduation.
Even Stoops didn't realize a potential star was waiting in the wings.
It is hard to comprehend now, but just 14 months ago, Bradford was one of three unheralded competitors for Oklahoma's starting quarterback job, along with juco transfer Joey Halzle and true freshman Keith Nichol (who's since transferred to Michigan State).
Bradford, an Oklahoma City native, largely flew under the radar as a recruit. Rivals.com and Scout.com both listed him as a three-star prospect. Long, now the coach at San Diego State, had become a fan of Bradford's when he participated in OU's summer camps, and Stoops and Wilson were impressed with his athleticism. In high school, the 6-foot-4 Bradford excelled in both basketball and golf as well.
"He's a lot more athletic than people realize," Wilson said. "[Former OU basketball coach Kelvin] Sampson thought he could play here. A year ago, he shot 63 at a municipal course."
Still, the coaches weren't sure what to expect when Bradford took the field for the first time last fall. They put him in the shotgun, kept the playbook fairly simple and anticipated relying on his ability to throw on the run. In his first four collegiate starts, Bradford completed 78.1 percent of his passes while throwing 14 touchdowns and just two interceptions. OU averaged 61.5 points in those games, highlighted by a 51-13 rout of Miami.
"When we played Miami, we knew they were going to come after us," Wilson said. "He played so calm and so within himself. He handled a lot of things mentally as a freshman better than I've seen some seniors who were great players."
The coaches added more wrinkles to the game plan every week and watched Bradford continue to excel, often showing a veteran's ability to go through as many as four or five progressions on a given play.
Bradford's freshman season wasn't entirely flawless -- he struggled in his first Big 12 road start, a 27-24 loss at Colorado, and threw a costly interception in the end zone in the Sooners' Fiesta Bowl defeat to West Virginia. However, in leading OU to another 11-win season and Big 12 championship, he finished the season as the nation's top-rated passer, putting up numbers (a 69.5 completion percentage, 3,121 yards, 36 touchdowns and eight interceptions) that impressed even him.
"Obviously, I had confidence in myself and knew if I went in there and played the way the coaches wanted me to play, I'd do well," Bradford said. "But there were times after the season, I'd look back and go, 'Wow ... did that really just happen?' "
With a more veteran unit surrounding Bradford this season -- five returning starters on the offensive line (including preseason All-America guard Duke Robinson), senior receivers Juaquin Iglesias and Manuel Johnson, junior tight end Jermaine Gresham, junior tailback Chris Brown and sophomore DeMarco Murray -- OU's coaches let fly their full playbook from Day 1. They also added a new wrinkle. At the end of last season, Stoops asked Wilson to implement a no-huddle attack, an increasingly popular tactic in the Big 12 that Wilson first used at Northwestern eight years ago.
The results so far: Five straight lopsided victories (against Chattanooga, Cincinnati, Washington, TCU and Baylor), with Bradford throwing for four or more touchdowns three times and notching at least 300 yards each of the past four games. Murray and Brown have averaged a combined 148.8 rushing yards.
How versatile is Oklahoma's offense? On their first offensive series of last week's 49-17 win at Baylor, the Sooners lined up in a shotgun, one-back set and, on the third play, Bradford hit a wide-open Johnson for a 53-yard touchdown. On their next possession, they switched to the I-formation and ran the ball on seven of the nine plays in a 63-yard touchdown drive. From there OU switched between the shotgun and the I-formation, often mixing in two tight end sets or lining up two backs in the shotgun, all while operating without a huddle.
"The beauty of our offense is the ability to do a lot of different things with a lot of different groupings," Wilson said. "It's multiple in looks and multiple in the ability to run and pass."
Bradford said he's come to expect a familiar play-calling strategy from the coaches. "Usually [Wilson] will start out trying to get me into a rhythm, whether it's plays I've told coach Heupel I'm more comfortable running or plays that have worked in the past," the quarterback said. "But once I get going, we get into all the stuff we've talked about during the week."
Bradford also has a certain, comforting voice in his ear on the sideline. "Coach Stoops will come and talk to me during the course of the game," Bradford said. "As a defensive coach, he can recognize what they're doing on defense. If he sees something, he'll let me know. From the emotional standpoint of the game, he's really good about saying 'Go out there, stay calm, have fun.'"
On Saturday, the Sooners face a significant step up in competition, but Texas knows well the difficulties of stopping Stoops' best offenses. In 2000, Heupel led a 63-14 rout of the 'Horns. In '03, White engineered a 65-13 blowout. Last year, Bradford went 21-of-32 for 244 yards and three touchdowns, including a go-ahead 35-yarder to Malcolm Kelly in the fourth quarter of a 28-21 OU victory.
"To [Oklahoma's] credit, they've stayed ahead of the game," said Texas coach Brown. "They've gone from running the Mike Leach offense to lining up in the I and running the ball a lot to running an up-tempo offense that's really giving people problems. They've really kept up with trends in college football."
Yet for all the offensive accolades and gaudy statistics, Stoops' program still encounters two unwanted perceptions -- one real, one outdated.
It's no secret the Sooners have gained a reputation for laying an egg in their recent BCS bowl appearances. They've lost four straight BCS matchups: the 2004 Sugar to LSU, the 2005 Orange to Oklahoma, the 2007 Fiesta to Boise State and the 2008 Fiesta to West Virginia.
Yet somehow, Oklahoma's reputation as a defensive team remains in tact -- this despite the fact that breakdowns on that side of the ball were primarily responsible for OU's past three bowl defeats. While the Sooners' defense has remained consistently respectable, never ranking outside the top 25 nationally this decade, it hasn't been as dominant the past five years as it was during its 2000-03 apex, when Stoops' brother Mike was co-coordinator and its average national ranking was sixth.
OU's offense, on the other hand, has never been more productive than it has over the past two seasons, averaging 44.2 points and 472.9 yards in the 19 games Bradford has started.
"It seems like people still think of us more defensively, but offensively, we've been fairly consistent as well," Stoops said. "Have we gotten the recognition [on offense]? I don't know. But I'm not complaining."