Joel Klatt on Oklahoma's problems on offense: 'It's not a quarterback issue'

Oklahoma is reshuffling their entire offense after what happened last weekend against Tennessee. That won’t be fixed in just a week, though, with how bad that Joel Klatt thought they were on that side of the ball.

Klatt assessed the Sooners’ offensive film from their conference opener and reacted to it on his show this week. Frankly, it wasn’t pretty whatsoever for OU.

“What was that?” Klatt asked. “I did watch their offensive film on Sunday. It was gross. It was gross…Their film is a disaster. This offense has to go back to square one.”

“The offense was an absolute mess. Now they have a quarterback dilemma but I’m here to tell you that it is not a quarterback issue at Oklahoma,” said Klatt.

Oklahoma totaled just 222 yards overall with neither aspect being all that effective. They also only converted on third down just three times in the entire game.

That’s before getting to the quarterback question of it all. Jackson Arnold started the game and went 7/16 (43.8%) for 54 yards with three total interceptions. The Sooners then sat him for Michael Hawkins who went 11/18 (61.1%) for 132 yards, plus 22 more in rushing, and a touchdown.

Coming out of that game, Oklahoma is now sticking with Hawkins. However, with what all is wrong with their offense from a technical and foundational standpoint, Klatt knows it doesn’t matter which quarterback that they play.

“You can say all you want that, like, okay, they’ve got a quarterback issue and they’ve got to fix the quarterback position. It’s not a quarterback issue. It really isn’t. While their quarterbacks played poorly, it is an offensive issue,” said Klatt. “Every single piece of their offense was bad – every single piece. The game plan? Bad. Execution? Bad. The fundamentals? Bad. All of it. All of it. Every single piece of it. The protection plan was, at times, egregiously bad where the quarterback is looking dead into the spot where the linebacker is blitzing from, which means he either should be hot or side adjust, meaning, like, throw the football quickly, and he’s taking a full drop, hitching, and almost getting sacked while the offense shuffles the other direction, slides the other direction.”

“It’s wild what they’re doing!” Klatt exclaimed. “The schematics are totally off.”

For Klatt, that leaves the blame on the coaching staff. Either they coached them to do what he saw on tape, which would be bad, or they’re allowing the team to do what he saw on tape, which would be bad too.

“As a coach, you have to understand these two truths about the film that you watch. What you see on that film? You are either only one of two things – coaching or allowing,” said Klatt. “At OU, there is a lot of bad football being played. If you’re telling me that everything that they coach them to do is not being done on the film then that’s a problem. If they are doing what’s being coached then that’s a problem.”

Oklahoma might find some better offense with this change ahead of their first road game in the league. Still, Klatt says it’s going to take a lot more than that to fix what he saw happening in Norman last weekend.