Special teams add punch to Sooners’ game
NORMAN — In the weeks after Oklahoma’s loss to Georgia in the Rose Bowl, Sooners coach Lincoln Riley finally was able to take stock of what he wanted to prioritize as a head coach.
To that point, Riley was mostly playing off instinct as he navigated a whirlwind first few months as OU’s coach.
One of the major realizations during those days were that OU needed to put an added emphasis on special teams.
“One thing I kept going back to was that I had to do better, we as a staff had to do better, the players had to do better (on special teams),” Riley said. “We needed to really step up there.”
Riley brought in Shane Beamer as the added
assistant after last season, making Beamer the assistant head coach for offense and teaming him with Jay Boulware to handle the Sooners’ special teams.
Through two games, the change in emphasis is evident.
In the season opener against Florida Atlantic, Lee Morris blocked a punt that was recovered for a touchdown by Curtis Bolton.
Last week against UCLA, Tre Brown broke free on a
kickoff return and nearly scored and CeeDee Lamb nearly returned a punt. Both led to quick touchdowns for Oklahoma’s offense.
Big special teams plays — not only kick returns and punt returns but aggressively going after punts and field goals and gambling in other areas — was a hallmark of the early part of the Bob Stoops era.
The emphasis on that part of the game waned a bit late in his tenure, especially after the Sooners’ offense was so explosive that the costbenefit of being aggressive weighed toward a safer approach of just getting the ball back in the offense’s hands and avoiding costly mistakes.
But Beamer’s hiring changed that, something Lamb noticed immediately in his first meeting with the new coach.
“This guy’s a mastermind,” Lamb remembers thinking during that meeting. “He’s so smart. He know what he needs to do and he knows what our opponents are going to do.”
That warms Antonio Perkins’ heart.
Perkins returned eight punts for touchdowns from 2002-04, including an NCAA-record three in a game against UCLA in 2003.
“Coach Stoops, that’s one of the things he harped on was special teams,” Perkins said. “He lived and died by special teams. He sat in every special teams meeting and that was because he knew that phase of the game could win or lose your ballgame.”
Perkins was on the sideline Saturday when the Sooners beat the Bruins with the help of the two long returns.
“I feel like the first two games, we’re seeing a different team that we’d seen last year,” Perkins said.
The Sooners are also using plenty of their frontline players on special teams units.
Bolton said he was never on special teams in high school but has remained on those units at OU, even after earning a starting linebacker job this year. Safety Justin Broiles is a special teams regular. Lamb is one of the Sooners’ most important offensive players and continues to return punts, without having the mandate to fair catch most everything that comes his way.
“It’s the coaching staff,” Bolton said of the reason for the renewed aggressiveness on special teams. “A lot of people don’t take special teams serious. I don’t understand. You see it every game.
“They’re letting us know it’s important. If you want to play on this team, you’re gonna bust your (butt) on special teams. That’s something that you should pride yourself on.”