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'Player friendly' Air Raid easy for OU players to pick up
Other than record-setting running back Samaje Perine, there was very little of the Oklahoma Sooners' offense to like.
So Bob Stoops made the difficult decision to fire Josh Heupel, his former quarterback, as his offensive coordinator. After he dropped the hammer, Stoops said he wanted to hire a coach who could come in, take control and implement his own offense.
Stoops went back to his roots and hired Lincoln Riley, a disciple of his first offensive coordinator at Oklahoma and master of the spread passing game, Mike Leach.
So far, so good. Stoops has left the implementation of the Air Raid to his smiling, young coach and the results, in terms of the team picking up the scheme and their reviews of it, have been favorable.
"I don't want to say it's a simple offense to learn," Stoops said on Tuesday's Big 12 coaches teleconference. But it is player friendly and young people or even freshmen are able to pick up on it early."
The part that hasn't been easily deciphered is which one of four quarterbacks will get to run the offense. That will come soon enough. Sooners fans can at least take heart that whichever quarterback finally wins the job, he can always hand off to the great Perine.
