Tricked ya: How Trey Sermon’s pass in the OU-Texas game came together
NORMAN — Trey Sermon’s 42-yard pass to Marquise Brown against Texas wasn’t exactly a thing of beauty.
With a Texas linebacker closing in, the freshman had to get the pass off quickly.
“When he called it, I got excited,” Sermon said. “I was like, ‘I’m about to throw a touchdown.’”
It was hardly a tight spiral, wobbling as it landed in Brown’s hands, and Brown went down well short of the end zone.
Even so, coach Lincoln Riley’s willingness to design and use unexpected play calls is starting to become more common in his first year as a head coach.
“Some weeks you spend a lot of time, some weeks not much,” Riley said of drawing up trick plays. “It just depends on how the game plan flows. It’s definitely the fun part of it, and it’s fun when you have guys who can do it.”
To choose Sermon, Riley had a tryout of sorts to see who on the team could best throw the ball. Before Saturday, Sermon figures he last threw a ball during a high school game. In previous years, Dede Westbrook and Joe Mixon earned some of the converted-quarterback roles in trick plays.
“When we first got here with guys, we did that kind of, just to see everybody throw it and to see if anyone threw it decent,” Riley said. “We’ve had some guys — Dede and Shep (Sterling Shepard) threw the ball well, Mixon threw the ball pretty well.
“Those things are good but you have to have guys who can execute them and then also guys who are smart enough if it’s not there to not throw it into double coverage, too. (Sermon) did a good job with that one.”
When Riley saw Sermon attempt a pass in practice earlier in the season, it wasn’t very pretty either. It looked nothing like the smooth passes of quarterback Baker Mayfield.
“Watching him throw gives you no confidence about doing it,” Riley said. “But then we did it once in a scrimmage or a team period against our defense and even though it looked awful, it worked and he made good decisions, which is the most important thing.”
Sermon’s success in the scrimmage coupled with his persistence, practicing the throw frequently after practice, gave Riley enough confidence to pick his freshman running back for the starring role in the No. 9 Sooners’ trick play.
“I wouldn’t have done it if he was throwing it into the dirt,” Riley said. “Aesthetically it didn’t look good. He showed the ability to complete it. He showed the ability to make good decisions when it wasn’t there. It was a good start.”
Riley has called a couple other trick plays this season, using wide receiver Jeffery Mead to complete a 17-yard pass to Dimitri Flowers in the second quarter of the Iowa State loss.
OU didn’t score off that play either, but Riley isn’t mad about that.
“I thought the one a week before against Iowa State had a chance to go bigger,” he said. “If you are still getting good chunk yardage on them, I’m good with it. Of course I want them all to score, but if they are positive plays for us, I’m good with it.”
Though Riley’s opened up his playbook a couple of times early in the season, he’s not just calling trick plays for the sake of adding flashy plays to a highlight reel. He also doesn’t wait until Saturday to decide if he’s going to call a little razzle-dazzle. While we won’t know what tricks Riley has up his sleeve for Kansas State, he’s already got it all figured out.
“I don’t leave those decisions up to game day,” he said. “Those decisions are made well before that.”