Lincoln Riley is 247Sports' Offensive Coordinator of the Year (lots of words)

[Mazeppa]

Lincoln Riley is 247Sports' Offensive Coordinator of the Year

The mark of any great coordinator is the ability to adjust to his personnel as needed. And for finding success while adjusting, and helping to steer his team into the College Football Playoff, Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley is now the 247Sports Offensive Coordinator of the Year.
Just a year ago, the Sooners were in a bad spot. They went 8-5, with a 5-4 mark in the Big 12, and scored just 14 points against Baylor and six in the Russell Athletic Bowl against Clemson. Their offense — if effective at times — was woefully unbalanced, with freshman Samaje Perine sledgehammering behind a senior-dominated offensive line.
That didn’t bode well for 2015. Because while Perine returned, the Sooners had to patch several holes on the offensive line. An under-the-radar star, bruising fullback Aaron Ripkowski, was also graduating, costing Perine his lead blocker. Further, the 2014 team was marred by poor-to-inconsistent quarterback play and a wide receiver group that fell to pieces after injuries to star Sterling Shepard.
To put it mildly, changes were coming. Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops fired Josh Heupel — who has recently been hired by Missouri as the Tigers’ new offensive coordinator — and receivers coach Jay Norvell, who was picked up soon after by Texas, and Stoops announced the Sooners’ intentions to get back to their Air Raid roots. Indeed, Oklahoma’s lone national championship under Stoops came with Mark Mangino calling an Air Raid system in 2000, with the gutsy Heupel as the trigger-man.
Both coach and trigger-man were incoming. Stoops tapped the then-31-year-old Lincoln Riley, fresh off coordinating East Carolina’s offense to 371.9 passing yards and 533.0 total yards per game, as his new offensive coordinator, while most believed Texas Tech transfer Baker Mayfield led the race for the starting quarterback job against incumbent Trevor Knight. Shortly before the season started, Mayfield did indeed win the job, and things went happily ever after, right?
Not exactly. While the offense brought successes early on: Mayfield setting the Oklahoma total offense record against Tulsa, throwing for 439 yards against Akron and 320 yards in a win over West Virginia, there were also warning signs. Mayfield had to run for his life before leading a late comeback — relying heavily on Shepard —*to win at Tennessee.
And then Texas happened. In what some have called the most inexplicable result of the season, Texas defeated Oklahoma 24-17. In reality, the result wasn’t difficult to explain. Like at Tennessee, Oklahoma was destroyed up front. Mayfield was sacked six times, Oklahoma averaged 1.8 yards per carry and the Sooners’ receivers, once again, other than Shepard, who had six catches for 95 yards, struggled to get open.
It was clear that the Sooners didn’t have the offensive line to line up and run Perine 40 times, and that wasn’t Riley’s background, anyway. They didn’t have the depth at wide receiver to run a pure Air Raid every week. Still, something had to be done.*
Somewhere in that nightmare scenario, the Sooners were able to find what would carry them the rest of the season: balance. Against Kansas State the next week, Oklahoma rolled out slightly different offensive line group with two new starters. The group clicked as former 247Sports Composite five-star recruit Joe Mixon actually led Oklahoma in rushing, Dede Westbrook in receiving as the Sooners rushed for 232 yards and Baker Mayfield passed for 282 more.
Oklahoma was still running plenty of Air Raid sets. But the Sooners were also mixing in more two-back run game with both Perine and Mixon in the backfield, and weren’t asking any one player, be it Mayfield, Shepard or Perine, to carry the show. Oklahoma averaged 47.6 points per game the rest of the year, after topping 47 points just once in the first five games (52 points against Tulsa).
It should also be noted that those gains came against tougher competition. Six of Oklahoma’s final eight opponents played in bowl games, and those games included the three best teams in the Big 12 (other than the Sooners) in Baylor (44 points), TCU (30 points in a game where Mayfield missed the second half) and Oklahoma State (58). Only in the Orange Bowl, a game where the Sooners had 17 points at halftime, did Oklahoma fail to reach the 30-point mark. And in that game —*like in the Tennessee and Texas games earlier —*Oklahoma lost the battle up front.
Mayfield emerged as one of the best quarterbacks in the country, passing for 3,700 yards and 36 touchdowns to seven interceptions and rushing for 405 more yards and seven more touchdowns. He finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting in his first full year as a starter. That production was spread around. Sure, Shepard had an All-America caliber season with 86 catches for 1,288 yards and 11 touchdowns. But Westbrook (743 yards), Durron Neal (559 yards) and Jarvis Baxter (218) did their parts, while auxiliary parts like tight end Mark Andrews (318 yards, seven touchdowns) and H-back Dimitri Flowers (130 yards, four touchdowns) also found ways to contribute to the scoreboard. Mixon was a weapon here as well, catching 28 passes for 356 yards and four scores himself. The days of a one-receiver team were over.
And while Riley’s background was in the Air Raid, he oversaw a Sooner running game that took a major leap forward as well. Perine and Mixon combined for 115 carries and 560 yards — that’s 23 carries for 112 yards per game (4.87 yards per carry) in the first five games of the season —*then carried 191 times for 1,542 yards in the final eight games. That means they carried only about a carry more per game (23.88 carries) but put up 192.75 yards per game and 8.1 (!!!) yards per carry.
More importantly, Oklahoma’s offense showed it was capable of firing against high-level teams, as Oklahoma emerged from a Big 12 also-ran to a College Football Playoff caliber team.
What can Riley do for an encore? Mayfield, Perine, Mixon and a number of the receivers —*but not Shepard —*are due back in 2016. Left tackle Orlando Brown emerged as a future star as a redshirt freshman, and he’s one of three returning offensive line starters.
Most are projecting the Sooners as a Top 5ish team next year. If they get there, it will likely because the offense was too tough to stop, a major difference over where the Sooners were at prior to Riley’s arrival.

[BoulderSooner79]

This article has TDTW's mark all over it - I'm sure he was the ghost writer.