Oklahoma OC Jeff Lebby Addresses Slow Starts, Fast Tempo and Crowd Noise
NORMAN — Oklahoma offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby said Monday the entire operation needs to be smoother and cleaner.
“Starting with me,” Lebby said.
The Sooners took a 41-34 home loss to Kansas State on Saturday night thanks to an endless stream of defensive breakdowns.
But the offense, despite putting up 550 yards and 34 points, shouldered its share of blame, too.
Five offensive penalties, Lebby said, were “drive killers.”
Another slow start — the Sooners struggled to maintain early offensive possessions for the third straight game — was also to blame.
Penalties can be addressed. But how does Lebby go about starting games better and more efficiently?
“It's heightened awareness, because of talking about it, one,” Lebby said. “And two, me doing a better job of starting the game with a couple of things that are maybe — a little more layups for our guys, you know, in getting it going that way.”
None off OU’s first five offensive possessions lasted more than 80 seconds. Two of those produced touchdowns, but three ended with punts.
Lebby has become painfully aware of the stress that kind of tempo is putting in the Sooner defense.
“It was all about taking advantage of opportunities and scoring touchdowns,” Lebby said. “So that was the reality of it. Because of the fact that we go down 14-0, we start the way we do offensively, and we don't help ourselves. Then at that point, you got to take advantage every opportunity you get in. That part of the game, it's about scoring touchdowns, you know and that's what we needed to get accomplished. We didn't score enough of them.”
Lebby said Saturday night after the game that “we would talk about” stadium operations that might not be helping the offense. To wit, the public address announcer this season has begun the home crowd by shouting “Boomer!” after each first down. That elicits the usual “Sooner!” from the fans.
But several of those have happened while Lebby and the offense are running intensely fast tempo, and it even appears to have drawn the OU offensive line into committing false start penalties.
On one video clip shot from the sideline, left guard McKade Mettauer clearly moves on the “Boomer!” while quarterback Dillon Gabriel awaits the snap.
“I think some of those things will get cleaned up,” Lebby said Tuesday. “It’s just everybody getting used to how we're playing. But I think that part of it will get cleaned up.
“Again, I do not foresee that being an issue moving forward. I really don’t.”
Ultimately, it’s on the offensive personnel to not move until the football is snapped. It might be a challenge, but it has to be done. And not every pre-snap penalty was because of the PA announcer.
This team has work a lot of work to do in practice this week ahead of Saturday morning’s game at TCU.
“We're gonna put a ton of emphasis on it,” Lebby said. “We talked about playing smart, clean football every single day of the week and we've got to do that. We got to do a better job coaching it. And again, we've been pretty clean — and then for whatever reason Saturday evening we weren’t. So we got to get it right.”
