Understanding Josh Heupel

[44BluesExplosion]

It wasn't that long ago, so the memory is still pretty vivid. I remember after a game his senior year when Stoops was asked what kind of permissions Josh had at the line of scrimmage. He responded with something like this:

"Josh gets the call the sidelines, but once at the line of scrimmage he becomes the offensive coordinator. He can check based off of formation into anything he wants."

And man, did he ever audible... Second only to Peyton Manning it seems like now. And his cadence was so unpredictable (often snaps happened in the middle of fake checks) that d-lines often found themselves in the neutral zone while defensive backs tried to defend the "free" play.

The value that Josh brought to the table was so much more than just natural ability. This brainy method of play really hasn't been seen at Oklahoma since.

If you really pay attention to what's going on at the line of scrimmage, you'll know that we haven't really had a QB in such great command of the system since. It's not that we've had a bunch of brain dead QBs piloting the offense (far from that in fact) since Josh left, but we just haven't had enough confidence in the decision making capabilities in a QB since. Starting with Nate, our QBs have predominantly taken their audible directions from the sidelines while in formation.

I'm sure you have all noticed Paul glancing to the sidelines before each snap looking for a check. Nate, Rhett, and even Jason did this as well. Josh rarely if ever did...

The interesting thing about this year is that Josh is actually the guy signing in a lot of these checks this year. Great, right? While it has been pretty good for us, it was a real problem at A&M. Because of noise, the coaching staff decided not to check many times last weekend. In an effort to be conservative, we relied heavily on Paul under center and our OL to support the running game. If you go back and look at the tape, you will only count 3 audibles the entire game. That really limited us on offense.

While some might see this as a relative weakness, I see it as a perfect example of why Josh Heupel was an amazing QB with an incredible command of the line of scrimmage regardless of the environment. To me, this characteristic is one of the major reasons we have a 2000 banner.

[TheUnnamedSooner]

This is going from memory, and an intoxicated one at that, so I may be wrong. But I don't remember much audibles from Jason. It just seemed we were going to kick their a$$ no matter what play we called.... That arrogance hurt in a couple games I care not to mention...

[tbl]

Good post Blues. I haven't looked to see what you're saying, but it makes sense. I'll blindly accept it all as truth (seriously). :D

[Ike]

This is exactly what made Josh such an amazing QB. As a player, he was knowledgeable enough of the game to be an OC right then and there. Thats rare. I can think of a large number of great QBs that don't have the smarts that Josh had. One could argue that Josh had to be that smart because many other QB's had him beat in terms of raw abilities.

As far as this last A&M game, I can understand limiting audibles due to the loudness. In a loud environment, an audible can cause the team to get off of the same page, which is more dangerous than running a play that is designed to go right into the teeth of the D that is being shown. You'd rather run right into their teeth than risk putting the team in a situation where everyone is thinking something different is going to happen.

[44BluesExplosion]

Noise doesn't ALWAYS stop a QB from checking off at the line of scrimmage. What it does, is limit the amount of time a QB has to recognize the defense. This was actually one of Josh's great abilities - he could recognize the zone vs. man almost as he was leaving the huddle. And in Mike Leach's offense this was usually barely into the play clock.

So, now Josh has 15 seconds to get an audible called and the snap off. That's plenty of time to take a couple of steps east and west to communicate the play to each side of the formation.

Using Bomar as an example... he wasn't capable of reading a defense as quickly (if at all). By the time he is in formation and has read the defense with motion or just by eye, he has maybe 7 secs to check off. While this might be ample in a home environment, it just isn't when your on the road at someplace like A&M.

The fact that Paul takes prolly around 95% of his audibles from the sidelines just closes the time window even more. In my opinion (hardly a professional one), this is exactly why we only checked 3 times this past weekend.

If the A&M game would have gone down in Norman this year, I think we would have seen Paul in the shotgun a lot more often and we would have won by 14...