How does Oklahoma keep blowing leads? How does Lincoln Riley fix it?
Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley is trying to figure out why his team keeps blowing big leads.
He thinks he has found some clues.
“The thing for us — which is my fault — we’ve gotten too results oriented,” Riley said Monday. “You get to playing well against a team and you think you’ve got a chance to separate and whether you put it on cruise control because you think you’ve got the thing wrapped up or you start to panic at the first sign of things not going right or not going to plan.”
The latest example was last Saturday’s meltdown against Kansas State. The Sooners led by 21 in the final minutes of the third quarter, but then suffered two turnovers and a blocked punt. Riley also punted the ball away with just under three minutes left, which allowed K-State to burn two minutes off the clock.
Riley’s troubles with blown leads actually started way back in his first year as head coach, when Oklahoma jumped to a 24-10 lead on Iowa State, then got outscored 28-7 the rest of the way to lose 38-31.
In the Rose Bowl that season, the Sooners led Georgia 31-14 with six seconds to go before halftime but lost 54-48 in overtime.
In 2019, it happened three times.
In the Cotton Bowl, the Sooners led by double digits throughout the second half, including 27-17 at the start of the fourth quarter and 34-20 with four minutes left. But both times Texas cut Oklahoma’s lead to a touchdown.
Against Iowa State, OU grabbed a 42-21 lead late in the third quarter, but the Cyclones came back to within a failed 2-point conversion as the Sooners hung on 42-41.
And two weeks later, the Sooners jumped out to a 21-0 lead against TCU, but the Horned Frogs got within 28-24 before the comeback stalled in the fourth quarter.
Defensive captain Pat Fields on Saturday suggested the Sooners come out with a killer mentality, but then they start playing not to lose.
So which was it against Wildcats? Did the Sooners put it on cruise control, or did they panic when things got tough? Riley
“I think you’ve got a little bit of both,” he said. “Either one, you’re reacting to game situations as opposed to reacting to your standard of play. And so that’s something we have to do a better job with.
“Listen, it’s not ever easy to put people away. People think it’s just easy, that you’ve been rolling right along, why not just keep doing it? These guys got scholarship players and coaches and all that, too. But we expect to play a lot better. For us, we’ve got to be a lot less results-oriented and stay true to our standard of play. And that’s the absolute bottom line.”
How, then, does a coach implement such systemic changes? This isn’t running after practice or catching footballs out of a jugs gun. This kind of behavior must be modified from the inside. Does Riley have a solution?
“Just like we do everything,” he said. “I’m not saying anything’s ever easy to change, but we’re with these guys a lot. I think it’s a culture, I think it’s a mentality, I think it’s a mindset in how we approach the game. Just like you change anything else: you go to work, you bust your tail on it, you live it yourself and then you trust the players to follow suit.”
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