Brent Venables describes best way to prepare for Gus Malzahn’s offense, trick plays

Oklahoma had the bye week to celebrate Red River. Now, the Sooners turn their attention to UCF, hoping to avoid a letdown game. Head coach Brent Venables doesn’t expect this to be easy, though, especially in the face of Gus Malzahn‘s offensive scheme.

Malzahn made his name for running an innovative offense. That’s an offense that moves fast and spreads out opposing defenses. It also runs a lot of screens, option reads, and trick plays that can force a defense into mistakes. So, Venables knows he needs to be prepared.

“I think [for] good coaches, deception is part of the game,” Brent Venables said. “That’s really in any sport. It was maybe Sun Tzu in The Art of War talking about, again, deception, as something that is utilized on the battlefield. For football or sport, I think it’s always a good thing, both sides of the ball. I think that’s a big part of strategy. Gus and UCF, our next couple of weeks, both teams [including Kansas], I think they’re top two or three in the country in deceptive plays as far as a percentage of their total number of plays.”

Now in his third season at UCF, the offense has been thriving under Gus Malzahn’s leadership. Currently, the Knights are 28th in scoring offense, averaging 34.7 points per game. A huge part of that has been the running game. The Knights are third nationally in rushing yards per game, with an average of 246.3 yards per game. UCF has done that with injury issues, particularly to starting quarterback John Rhys Plumlee.

“If they run the screen, they’re gonna run the screen-and-go. If they run the sprint, they’ve got the sprint throwback. If they run the stretch, they’re gonna run the flea-flicker. They double-pass. They throw back to the quarterback. You’ve got the fumblerooski. You’re gonna get the jet pass, all of those things to slow your aggression down and to manipulate you. We try to work on that every single week as part of our normal, even if they don’t do it,” Venables said.

“[The]challenge for our guys is that this is gonna be part of their gameplan. Doesn’t mean you’re always successful defending those things. Through the first part of the year, we’ve had our moments, like Cincinnati, where we didn’t play the screen and go well. Then, we’ve had games like SMU where we defended a lot of trick plays, from fumblerooski, to reverse, reverse pass, to flea flicker. All those things.”

Brent Venables knows that Oklahoma needs to be prepared for anything when UCF has the ball. Stopping that attack, as he explained, is going to come down to playing disciplined on that side of the ball.

“Everybody’s gonna double-move you if you’re gonna play aggressive in coverage. They’re a big pop-pass team and they’ll run the pop pass-and-go. If they’re gonna run slant, they’re gonna run slant-and-go. Just all of those kinds of things if you’re gonna be aggressive. That’s part of our process, too, trying to get our guys to play with discipline within the schemes.”

At the very least, this won’t be Brent Venables’ first time coaching against Gus Malzahn. In 2016 and 2017, Clemson took on Auburn, when both coaches were at those respective schools. Clemson won both games, holding Malzahn’s Auburn teams to an average of 9.5 points per game.

Brent Venables explains importance of keeping players focused

It could be easy for Oklahoma to start looking ahead of the regular season. After all, the Sooners are heavy favorites from this point forward. However, Brent Venables knows that it’s important to find a way to keep players focused.

“Distractions have always been there for young people, so the challenge has been there really since the beginning of time. You’re on a college campus, you know? Those are there,” Venables said.

“To me, every year’s different, depends on your focus and your maturity of your football team and whether or not they can stay locked in and stay committed to doing the boring, methodical things that it takes to be successful. My challenge to them is our structure and our routine has got to be our compass and it’s got to be a sanctuary for them in how you get ready. They’ve got to buy into that, not get bored with that and show up every day with a mindset of developing good habits.”