Opponent Preview Film Session - Texas

Entering Dallas this year as the plucky underdog, the Oklahoma Sooners are primed to take the fight to the favorite Texas Longhorns in one of the biggest Red River Shootouts of the past two decades. Today we’ll highlight some of these key points and address what the Sooners will look to do on both sides of the ball to find success in key points of the game.

As an offensive that is best described as multiple, Texas primarily lives in an 11 personnel look with athletes at WR and TE, and the name of the game is simple - protect everything short, and do not allow chunk plays. Make Quinn Ewers attempt to beat you with deep balls down the field into coverage.

Against Alabama, the Longhorn looked offensive looked mightily pedestrian in the run and pass game, until a couple large chunk plays allowed them to get down the field into scoring positions - above you see a blown coverage by the Alabama second level against a simple short corner by Sanders which turns into a large play.

To defend the flats while staying over the top of the offense, expect a lot of cover 2, cover 2 match (or palms), quarters match and man with a safety high as well as creative stunt packages off this. Cornerback blitzes, Sam/Will fire, defensive ends dropping into the flats/low hook zones, everything is on the table here.

The idea is to mostly take away the short throws from Quinn while bringing pressure from different angles, while battling the deep ball with safeties which means one thing; the coverage by the linebacker core is going to be a critical factor Saturday. If the corners are low and the safeties are high, space between the hash mark and numbers (the “alley”) will be considered soft, and it’s going to be up to Stutsman and Company to keep the Longhorns out of the second level. This will effectively allow the safeties to play free on top.

When it comes to running the ball Texas is a zone running team (inside/outside) so beating the man in front of you and a clean, disciplined to your assignment game is needed out of the front 7, but given the Sooner track record thus far against the run, this is the least concerning part of the game defensively for this Oklahoma squad. Just mitigate the big plays and force Texas to snap the ball again and this offense will eventually stall out.

I have a few thoughts about this Texas defense - they utilize lighter boxes and fronts, they swap corners, and they like to rotate personnel. To combat this the Sooners must effectively establish the run game and utilize Dillon Gabriel’s legs, take advantage of the corners switching sides (boundary/field), and keep that tempo high, right where Jeff Lebby likes it.

Pete Kwiatkowski defense is traditionally a 2-4-5, with a fringe S/LB hybrid and a Jack linebacker to bolster the edge. Offensively for the Sooners the best way to account for this is establishing a dominant run game and making sure the Texas back end/second level is accounting for Gabriel as a runner. This, when coupled with our quick pass game, will either force them to add defenders to the box or stress the run more heavily which puts us at a big advantage when pushing the tempo and not giving their corners enough time to swap sides, allowing us to open up the deep passing game.

Alabama did a good job of stressing Texas with the run game but ultimately failed to capitalize with the passing game, making them one dimensional and allowing Texas to sell out a little bit. If the Sooners offense can jump out ahead of Texas and then continue to keep the offense multiple with well timed shots they may very well boat race them. A major key to this game in my opinion is an offense that finally needs to put it all together and for the man calling the offense to keep it simple and abuse what’s given to us until Coach Kwiatkowski is forced to address it.