Lebby's departure gives Venables a second chance to get his most important hire right
Despite the numbers, outgoing OC fell apart in the moment again and again
Jeff Lebby can have the argument.Â
The outgoing Sooner offensive coordinator and new head coach at Mississippi State wins the numbers race.
Buoyed by a Game 12 performance that saw Dillon Gabriel throw for 400 yards, the running game go for another 207, Lebby’s unit wins on the data.
Oklahoma averaged 502.6 yards of offense per game this regular season, trailing only LSU, Oregon and North Carolina.
It scored 43.2 points per game, trailing only LSU and Oregon.
It averaged 6.74 yards per snap, 12th in the nation.Â
Going deeper, Lebby’s unit averaged 11.6 yards per point, claims teamrankings.com, making it the eighth most scoring-efficient offense in the nation, too.
Lebby can take that to Starkville and maybe that’s what it’s all about.Â
Or, maybe, sometimes, it’s good to give the other side of a question oxygen first and close with the truth, because the truth is OU should be better off without Lebby, period, its ceiling suddenly higher.
Even if Mississippi State’s landed itself a fine head coach, it has nothing to do with OU, which need not remain held back by the consistently questionable and frequently indefensible machinations of its offensive coordinator.
By regular season’s end, Lebby finally teased the slight possibility he’d overcome himself as an offensive coach. Performances against West Virginia, BYU and TCU make that case.
But should you attempt recalling the last time his offense offered both success and resolve over three consecutive weeks, stop right now because it’s never happened.
In fact, only last season, it was hard to go three straight Saturdays without hearing Lebby confess to all the things he should have done instead.
Watching his exit forces recall of his Sooner coordinating predecessors, each one, beginning with Mike Leach, at least eventually becoming a head coach themselves.
Leach brought a revolution, changing the way offensive football was imagined nationwideÂ
Mark Mangino honored Leach’s vision, navigated a not-great running game and helped win a national championship for a team that relied heavily upon its defense.
Kevin Wilson might just be the best of the bunch, winning a Big 12 championship with Paul Thompson, in relief of jettisoned Rhett Bomar, behind center, his first year on the job.
When Sam Bradford became his quarterback, the Sooner offense became the nation’s best. He was also the man behind Landry Jones’ finest season, as well as a singularly ambitious play-caller, never managing, always pushing.
Though no coordinator has ever been surrounded by quarterback talent quite like Lincoln Riley, he still set the world on fire with Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts running his plays.Â
In Norman, Riley went for the kill, at least until halftime.
Two not mentioned?
Chuck Long, who was happily vanilla as long as he had Jason White and Adrian Peterson on his side, and Josh Heupel, who loved to throw the ball, though it was never clear to what end, nor if down, distance, the score, weather or anything else were ever taken into account.
Lebby belongs with them.
The statistical success of his offense was welcome, of course, and without it OU may have lost more than seven games last season and more than two this one.
But that never made it feel like he knew what he wanted to do with that offense.Â
It never kept him from going into a game with an idea, only to abandon it.Â
Lebby’s back-to-back-to-back performances, as recently as Oct. 21, Oct. 28 and Nov. 4, featured the kind of coordinator malpractice that can’t happen anywhere, much less OU, no matter how gaudy the final numbers.
Against UCF, Lebby’s offense took no shots, walked into the phone booth of its own accord, voluntarily yanking Dillon Gabriel’s shot at critically impacting the game.
Against Kansas it was that and worse, not only calling three straight fourth-quarter runs — including on second-and-11 and third-and-12 — only to punt following an Ethan Downs’ interception that should have decided the game, but throwing the ball just 13 times, total, until desperation forced six more attempts the last 47 seconds.
Bedlam brought a repeat.
On the back end of a Billy Bowman interception that turned all the momentum, Lebby ran Tawee Walker three straight times into the line, gaining 5 yards total, on a day Gabriel had been terrific. Then, at the end, needing 5 yards to keep moving, Lebby went with a 3-yard route to Drake Stoops.
Unfathomable.
Have the Sooners ever produced an offensive coordinator who so regularly lost faith in a superior quarterback?
Has OU ever produced a play-caller that 80,000 fans watching in person and millions more on TV, who can’t possibly know what’s required to coordinate an offense, are nonetheless situationally better at it than the man himself in so many game-changing and crucial moments?
Lebby’s defenders will tell you a few poor calls are never the difference between victory and defeat.
Or that you’re crazy to knock a guy who’s unit picked up 440 yards against the Jayhawks and 492 against the Pokes.
What they never do is address the failures: the losing of faith in a fine quarterback, the play-calling out of fear, the non-sensical situational decisions that really are the difference between winning and not.
Just maybe, at the end, Lebby figured it out.
Good for him.
OU needs somebody who figured it out a long time ago, who’s always growing, yes, but well beyond on-the-job training.
Brent Venables could make a poor choice but if he’s to be the head coach he’s supposed to be, he won’t.Â
Sooner Nation should be thrilled he’s getting a second chance to make his most important hire.
Well said, sir.