For all our success on O in '03, O.U. still remains a team that hangs it's hat on defense. Obviously, this is a manifestation of it's head coach. The key ingredient incumbent in all Stoops' defenses is speed. The pundents will tell you that to beat our D, you must do two things.......run right @ us, negating our speed & open field tackling ability, & exploit our tendency to be too aggressive & overrun plays. O.U. will line up in an off-set 4-3 & a two-deep zone. While this is our base set, we spend most of the time in a 4-2-5, dropping our Sam LB & adding a 5th DB, a big, fast safety. Philosophically, we play a gap/control style in the D-line, keeping opposing O-linemen off our LB's freeing them up to make tackles all over the field. The key position in O.U.'s D IS THE "Roy" safety position, manned by #8, Donte Nicholson, & named after the second best defensive player to ever suit up for the Sooners. To play this position in our scheme you must be able to line up in the box & take on blocks, blitz effectively, & still cover the field in pass D. DL: We rotate 8 players in the D-line with no drop off in productivity. This fact coupled with our gap philosophy is why our individual stats are so misleading. There's only one senior in this group, Kory Klein, but everyone expects Tommy Harris to declare after his junior year. This group is not large by today's standards but very athletic & quick. LB: The thinnest group on the team, even more so than our O-line. We lost our best LB to a season ending injury against Fresno St. Lance Mitchell will get a hardship ruling & return next year, but he is sorely missed right now & his absence was never more obvious than in the K-State game. Our Will LB, Teddy Lehman, is as advertised. He was a 100 meter sprint champion in HS & still runs a sub 4.5 @ 245 lbs. Frankly, I would love to see us move him to Mitchell's position for this game & replace him with future super star & true freshman, Lewis Baker (the only freshman to have his shirt burned this year). If Lehman stays outside, either Gayron Allen or Wayne Chambers will man the middle. We lost our potentially best reserve LB to a knee injury in Spring ball. Rufus Alexander (from Baton Rouge) has rehabed & will suit up in the Sugar Bowl, but is not all the way back. DB: Arguably the most talented group on this Sooner squad & compared favorably to what many consider the best Sooner secondary ever....the '73 group made up of Clyde Powers, Randy Hughes, Durwood Keeton, & Kenith Pope. This group is fast, great open field tacklers, & vicious hitters. They do have a tendency to be too aggressive & will bite on double cuts but have the speed to recover. The corners, Antonio Perkins & Derrick Strait are outstanding, both as cover men & in run support. Strait is the leader of our D. We'll play 3 safeties regularly, the aforementioned Donte Nicholson, Brandon Everage, & Brodney Pool. Everage is the biggest hitter but can get himself into trouble by concentrating on the hit rather than the tackle. We will disguise our schemes very well, showing MAN when we're really in ZONE, changing blitz tactics, etc. in an attempt to confuse the opposing QB. Besides the wisdom of running right @ us, & attempting to take advantage of our aggressiveness, we have shown a susceptability to biting on play-action, particularly in less than obvious down & distance situations. K-State was successful using this tactic when they iso'd Terry, their best WR on Antonio Perkins out of a first down run formation. Everage crept up into the box & Roberson play faked & hit Terry down the boundry. Perkins actually had good coverage but lost the ball & when the offside safety got over there, Terry came back for the ball & the two Sooner defenders ran into each other & Terry scored. Our whole D philosophy is to cut the field in half & give our O a down hill shot from the opponents side of the 50. Couple this approach with one of the great college punt returners, Antonio Perkins, & it's a game plan that has worked well for us. L.S.U. will need to have success running right @ us & then play actioning off this run success. If our "Roy" safety is allowed to creep & we stuff the run, we will be very difficult to throw on with any kind of consistency. Watch #8. If he has a big game, we will probably be successful on D. If not, it'll be a long night for O.U.
For all our success on O in '03, O.U. still remains a team that hangs it's hat on defense. Obviously, this is a manifestation of it's head coach. The key ingredient incumbent in all Stoops' defenses is speed. The pundents will tell you that to beat our D, you must do two things.......run right @ us, negating our speed & open field tackling ability, & exploit our tendency to be too aggressive & overrun plays. .................. Won't be a problem where OU gives up too much weight in the middle ... KSU wore that azz out with an O-line not as good as LSU's. O.U. will line up in an off-set 4-3 & a two-deep zone. ... Oh, yeah, baby ... that's what I talking about. Party time. While this is our base set, we spend most of the time in a 4-2-5, dropping our Sam LB & adding a 5th DB, a big, fast safety. Philosophically, we play a gap/control style in the D-line, keeping opposing O-linemen off our LB's freeing them up to make tackles all over the field. ... When the opposing lines don't run herd over the OU middle like a Marlin Perkins African Safari rerun showing a wildebeest stampede. The key position in O.U.'s D IS THE "Roy" safety position, manned by #8, Donte Nicholson, & named after the second best defensive player to ever suit up for the Sooners. To play this position in our scheme you must be able to line up in the box & take on blocks, blitz effectively, & still cover the field in pass D. ... blah, blah, blah ... every dee has a QB ... ours is named after a famous Prussian Penis that helped defeat Napolean at Waterloo. DL: We rotate 8 players in the D-line with no drop off in productivity. This fact coupled with our gap philosophy is why our individual stats are so misleading. There's only one senior in this group, Kory Klein, but everyone expects Tommy Harris to declare after his junior year. This group is not large by today's standards but very athletic & quick. ... YUP ... LIGHT AND VULNERABLE TO THE STAMPEDE ... Repeat after me 3 times ... Sproles is MY DADDY LB: The thinnest group on the team, even more so than our O-line. We lost our best LB to a season ending injury against Fresno St. Lance Mitchell will get a hardship ruling & return next year, but he is sorely missed right now & his absence was never more obvious than in the K-State game. Our Will LB, Teddy Lehman, is as advertised. He was a 100 meter sprint champion in HS & still runs a sub 4.5 @ 245 lbs. Frankly, I would love to see us move him to Mitchell's position for this game & replace him with future super star & true freshman, Lewis Baker (the only freshman to have his shirt burned this year). If Lehman stays outside, either Gayron Allen or Wayne Chambers will man the middle. We lost our potentially best reserve LB to a knee injury in Spring ball. Rufus Alexander (from Baton Rouge) has rehabed & will suit up in the Sugar Bowl, but is not all the way back. ... Yeah, yeah, yeah ... "Teddy Kruger" ... we've already heard that one. DB: Arguably the most talented group on this Sooner squad & compared favorably to what many consider the best Sooner secondary ever....the '73 group made up of Clyde Powers, Randy Hughes, Durwood Keeton, & Kenith Pope. This group is fast, great open field tacklers, & vicious hitters. ... YUP ... sitting back in that ZONE DEE ... sounds like '73 to me. And vicious, you say ... have they had their rabies shots. They do have a tendency to be too aggressive & will bite on double cuts but have the speed to recover. ... LOL, I've watched film on 6 games ... they bite all right The corners, Antonio Perkins & Derrick Strait are outstanding, both as cover men & in run support. Strait is the leader of our D. ... the ONLY PLAYERS worthy of respect back there ... and still not better than our guys. We'll play 3 safeties regularly, the aforementioned Donte Nicholson, Brandon Everage, & Brodney Pool. Everage is the biggest hitter but can get himself into trouble by concentrating on the hit rather than the tackle. ... Nice deflection move about Everage ... I see it as a basic skills weakness. KSU just scored on him ... again We will disguise our schemes very well, showing MAN when we're really in ZONE, changing blitz tactics, etc. in an attempt to confuse the opposing QB. ... Shazaaaaaammm, Gomer ... what will we dooooo! Mommy, I'm skeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeedddddd ... Don't let TEDDY KRUGER get me. Hey, Shemp ... we practice against the best defensive schemes in America ... Stoopsie can't hold Saban's jockstrap when it comes to pressure dee schemes ... we have one named after every state in america ... and they've gone to Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles for ideas. ..... Next! Besides the wisdom of running right @ us, & attempting to take advantage of our aggressiveness, we have shown a susceptability to biting on play-action, particularly in less than obvious down & distance situations. ... BITING again ... hehehe ... this is too fun ... so a team that spreads you out and has a good run ... like KSU ... can eat your azz alive with play action ... hmmmmmmmm ... that's original K-State was successful using this tactic when they iso'd Terry, their best WR on Antonio Perkins out of a first down run formation. Everage crept up into the box & Roberson play faked & hit Terry down the boundry. Perkins actually had good coverage but lost the ball & when the offside safety got over there, Terry came back for the ball & the two Sooner defenders ran into each other & Terry scored. ... yeah, it looked like an accident to me ... I was at the beach one day and I slipped ... and accidently stuck my ... hmmmm Our whole D philosophy is to cut the field in half & give our O a down hill shot from the opponents side of the 50. Couple this approach with one of the great college punt returners, Antonio Perkins, & it's a game plan that has worked well for us. ... YUP ... against hapless Big 12 Dees ... IT SHOULD WORK AGAINST LSU L.S.U. will need to have success running right @ us & then play actioning off this run success. If our "Roy" safety is allowed to creep & we stuff the run, we will be very difficult to throw on with any kind of consistency. ..... WOW .... he figured this all out by himself ... BRAVO. Watch #8. If he has a big game, we will probably be successful on D. If not, it'll be a long night for O.U. .... Sho' nuf' suga' ... ya'll come back now when you gits done wit' dat Brasso.
You didn't see all the OU televised games this year ... and the highlights ... you mean to say you don't have any friends in Texas or Big 12 Country with a VCR ... were you in Nepal for the Texas and KSU game?
all I have to say is the LSU D............................................. NO ONE is better than us this year Defensively................ and The OU D got disected against K State When we lost to Florida we gave up 19 pts not 35.........anddddd We haven't given up more than that all year in 1 game. Georgias D was the same way and we beat them twice.
Talk, Talk, Talk.Let stap the helmets on so I can come back here & Talk the Talk with you guy's after it's all said & done.Win or lose I will be back but let's hear none of this bads call cost us, ect.
I will say Florida SHOULD have scored 35 points (fumble on 2 yard line, etc) but they didn't....fact is though, since that game we haven't played one bad quarter of defense OU played 4 bad quarters in their last game
I’ve been conversing with a regular poster here because I feel he has good FB knowledge and does not attack your opinion. I mentioned earlier to him that it seems we are sort of double standard about this BCS system. We favor the results because it looked at the entire season and placed us in the Sugar bowl as we deserved. However, when it comes to OU we look at them as the human polls did and base their team on the performance or lack of performance during one game. One game does not make a season. One game can turn a season around and we have all witnessed that this season with several teams, “LSU” & “UF” are good examples. This OU team is good and will not be a cakewalk. KSU did show the FB world that OU could be defeated. Couple that with the fact no team intimidates LSU and you do have the making of a fantastic game. I do believe that LSU faced the best QB in the nation in “Eli Manning”, regardless of your personal opinions of “Ole Miss” or the Manning’s. He just didn’t get the HT. We have a good QB and he is a leader, and UGA’s Greene fits that mold too and look what happened to him with lots of pressure. Matt is just as susceptible as White or Greene. Reference the “Ole Miss” and UF games. Matt will throw into coverage and gets into trouble or should I say puts our team at risk by making decisions in throwing the ball away down the field instead of out of bounds. Matt does make far more positive decisions than negative ones. I'm just saying he is prone to do it when pressured. This game will be decided in all phases of the game no doubt, but none more important than our OL versus the Sooner DL. I believe that LSU will win this game by ten or more. Not because we will totally dismantle OU, but because we will be able to affect White more than OU will affect Matt. OU will have to keep more weapons in to protect White than LSU will have to do. LSU will have more success running the ball than OU, because we do have a better run game when our OL performs. This is my opinion. What say you?
LSU's defense-as well as any decent one-runs out of a basic 4-2-5 set, and that's the "economic reality" that's been forced on most because of the offenses that Florida State, Florida, and other offensive wizards like Friedgen when he was at GT threw out there... The mentality these minds use-and it's a good one-is another "reality" of college football. You try as hard as you can to recruit defensive backs, but everyone with talent in high school wants to play on the offensive side of the ball. There is a dearth of talent at the defensive back position, and there is a dearth of players who actually WANT to play defensive back, a position that is certainly not a "glamour" position on the field. Knowing that coach's will pilfer their secondary to help put playmakers on offense, and knowing that forcing a team to run nickel a majority of the time will eventually serve to expose a team's secondary-which is usually one of the weakest links on most teams-and run them out of depth and to exhaustion more quickly, is how many coach's have made a fortune on the collegiate level. Look at the top two coach's in the nation-Stoops and Saban...What is their MO? They have an endless string of talented players whom they've convinced that they both need to play defensive back, they want to play defensive back, and they can make a living on the next level doing it. They teach the position well, they recruiting the position well, and they motivate the position well. Both Stoops and Saban are defensive back coach's...Coincidence? I think not... Cory Webster-played wideout in HS, played wideout his first year on campus (that he was eligible...He was a Prop 48'er)... Travis Daniels-recruited and played in HS as a wideout... Randall Gay-Played running back, and was 3A MVP in HS at TB. LaRon Landry-Frosh who played QB/WR/RB/ATH in HS... Jack Hunt-Frosh year, half of soph. year, played WR... Those are the top players in our secondary...and all went the opposite way...Going FROM the glamour to the GUTS of any real dominant collegiate defense... Stoops seemingly has been able to do the same, with players in the past like Roy Williams, and current guys like Everage and Strait to dominate out on the islands... Is it any wonder that these two teams meet in the national title game? The respective secondary's of these two teams will tell the tale...LSU's because that's how OU predicates its offense, and because the pressure LSU will generate on the defensive line will put coverage at a premium... OU's because they won't be able to stop the run, and if they bite on the playfake and can't shed downfield blocks from a truly outstanding, physical, and tenacious corp of wideouts who take pride in downfield blocking, will literally get the score run up on them. Whoever wins the "Battle on the Islands" will win the Battle for the Sears Waterford Crystal Trophy...
This will be the best offense and defense LSU has seen all season. This will be "one of the best" defenses Oklahoma has seen all season and about the eight best offense. I am awaiting for an opposing stroke to state total offense numbers and/or scoring average as opposed to taking many other factors into account. LSU's season is completely defined by beating Georgia twice and decent part of their defensive numbers have capitalized against SEC teams returning 3 to 4 starters on offense from last year. Of course, you never suppose to look at things like that because falls in the realm of truth. This is the best quarterback that the LSU program has ever faced. However, that's not all as we all know.
