Oklahoma’s offense can’t keep compounding a past mistake by adding complications

Down their best five receivers and saddled with a line that — for reasons we’ll explain later — probably isn’t going to get better this season, Oklahoma offensive coaches spent the two weeks leading up to the Texas game concocting a game plan that somehow managed to make the job of quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. even more difficult.

Oklahoma’s first offensive series, which took place after the Sooners’ defense harassed Texas QB Quinn Ewers into an interception, told the story.

With receiver Brenen Thompson in motion from left to right, Hawkins called for the snap. At the snap, tight end Bauer Sharp — attached next to a left tackle who would pass set to simulate a draw play that would be part of the play fake — and left guard Jacob Sexton pulled to the right. As Hawkins caught the snap, tailback Jovantae Barnes took a counter step to his right. Hawkins then faked the handoff to Barnes, who faked a run to the left. Hawkins kept rolling and hit Thompson open in the flat for an 11-yard gain. 

Sounds great, right?

Except it worked only because Texas hadn’t seen it, and the Longhorns adjusted immediately.  

On Oklahoma’s next play, the Sooners used a similar motion and play action with the back, but only Sharp pulled from left to right. A Texas corner immediately picked up the motion man, and Texas edge rusher Trey Moore immediately pushed through Sharp and ran straight at Hawkins, forcing him toward safety Michael Taaffe, who had posted up at the line of scrimmage. Because Hawkins is a great athlete, he slipped away from Moore and Taaffe — only to get buried for no gain by defensive tackle Tiaoalii Savea and linebacker Anthony Hill.

After a deep shot attempt fell incomplete, the Sooners called the same play they ran on first down except in the other direction. While pulling Sharp ran into the right tackle, whose pass set action (remember, it’s to sell the fake to the back) led him directly into Sharp’s path. If the motion man was a potential target on this play, he didn’t act like it. Instead, he whiffed trying to block Hill, who nearly tackled Hawkins in the backfield. But because Hawkins is a great athlete, he escaped and gained six yards before getting pulverized by three Longhorns.

Unfortunately, that was four yards short of the line to gain. Oklahoma missed a field goal attempt and sent its defense back on the field. The Sooners kept coming back to versions of this concept, sometimes handing off to a back who had to immediately seek a cutback lane because the blockers to the side he was running to had been sent the other direction. One time, Oklahoma ran a sprint option from this action that expected Hawkins to read two unblocked defenders and decide whether to keep, pitch to the back or throw a shovel pass to a tight end up the middle.

That Oklahoma coaches thought Rube Goldberg-contraption plays that require pullers to traverse the length of the formation would be effective against a defense as fast as the Longhorns’ is problematic enough. What’s more disturbing is these were the plays at the top of the script. This is what offensive coordinator Seth Litrell thought was Oklahoma’s best stuff. 

That’s how you get takeaways such as this one from a 34-3 loss. 

Kept coming back to this yesterday:

Sark makes everything SO easy on Quinn Ewers. One guy schemed open on nearly every play. He never has to throw it in to trouble.

OU’s offense and Michael Hawkins have to slay dragons just to get one first down.

— Matt Ravis (@mattravis) October 13, 2024

Comparing the Texas offense to the Oklahoma offense is unfair, but not only because of the Sooners’ receiver injuries. Oklahoma made critical recruiting strategy mistakes years ago — some by coaches not there anymore and some by people still there — that put the offensive line in a hole that can only be escaped through recruiting and development that takes years and not weeks.

That’s a terrifying thought with South Carolina and its elite edges coming to Norman this week, followed by games against Ole Miss, Missouri, Alabama and LSU. Keep asking Hawkins to slay dragons instead of trying to do a few simple things right, and it’s possible Oklahoma loses all those games despite a defense that’s better than any Oklahoma has had since Bob Stoops was the head coach.

This stretch is where Oklahoma’s offensive staff will either earn its paychecks or earn buyouts. And the performance of that group will determine whether head coach Brent Venables spends the offseason building for the future or answering questions about job security.

The saving grace here is that defense, which against teams that aren’t ranked No. 1 in the country probably can keep the score manageable even if the offense isn’t producing at optimum capacity. If the Sooners can figure out how to break 20 going forward, that defense will give them a chance in every game.

But the offensive staff will have to work to figure out what the available players do best and lean into that. Because unlike previous years, the post-Texas schedule doesn’t include Kansas and Texas Tech. Nearly every opponent will have athletes as good or better than Oklahoma’s. Scheme is going to matter a great deal.

Meanwhile, Venables and company need to keep working to correct the mistakes of the past. They are in this mess in large part because they didn’t recruit offensive linemen the way the best SEC (and future SEC) programs recruit offensive linemen. This week’s Georgia-Texas game will only reinforce that point.

When the Bulldogs and Longhorns face off in Austin on Saturday, all 10 starting offensive linemen will be players their schools signed out of high school. With the exception of Georgia guard Xavier Truss — the old man of the group who signed in 2019 — all of them signed in either 2021 or 2022. (If injured Georgia center Jared Wilson comes back for this game, the total remains the same; he signed in 2021.) 

These are potentially the two best teams in the SEC. Georgia has won two of the past three national titles and Kirby Smart is generally regarded as the best roster-builder in college football. Steve Sarkisian, meanwhile, has turned Texas from a perennial underachiever into a true title contender after applying much of what he learned working for Nick Saban at Alabama. This includes roster construction.

What does this have to do with Oklahoma? Everything.

The Sooners couldn’t control losing five receivers this season to injury. That is terrible luck. But Oklahoma coaches made choices in 2021 and 2022 that put this line in this position. When they should have been loading up on the best high school offensive line recruits possible, they punted. And while they’ve seemingly corrected the underlying issues, it won’t help them immediately.

In the classes of 2021 and 2022, Georgia and Texas each signed a total of nine high school offensive linemen. How many did Oklahoma sign? Four. Two of those — Sexton and tackle Jake Taylor — are current starters. The other two transferred. Georgia and Texas lost players from those classes as well, but they signed enough to have more bites at the apple. The 2022 Texas class — Sarkisian’s first full-cycle class at Texas — included seven offensive linemen. Three of those, guard D.J. Campbell and tackles Kelvin Banks and Cameron Williams, start for this year’s team. Oklahoma was interested in those players as well, but at the time offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh wasn’t interested in having NIL discussions with recruits. Bedenbaugh, widely regarded as one of the best teachers of offensive line play in the country, is old-school. The adjustment was difficult for him. It didn’t help that the class of 2022 was affected by Lincoln Riley’s departure for USC. 

Bedenbaugh has since come to understand that NIL is part of the game, and Oklahoma has enthusiastically taken part in more recent transactions. It’s telling that Oklahoma’s highest ranked class of 2025 recruits are offensive tackles (No. 12 overall player Michael Fasusi and No. 97 overall player Ryan Fodje). The Sooners signed four high school offensive linemen in the class of 2024, which probably is the minimum number schools should sign in this era. But offensive linemen take time to develop. True freshmen aren’t supposed to play unless they’re absolute prodigies. This fix still will take time.

In the meantime, Littrell has to figure out how to construct a passable offense now. Is that difficult with the receiver injuries and an offensive line not built for the SEC? Sure. Littrell makes $1.1 million a year.  With apologies to Don Draper, that’s what the money is for.

Intricately designed plays with more moving parts than a Swiss watch might look pretty on paper, but when the offensive line is still two years away and the dragons are breathing fire across the line of scrimmage, it’s probably time to try another solution.