Defending the option: ‘Do your job’

NORMAN — According to former Oklahoma star safety Roy Williams, there’s no magic to defending the triple option.

“Do your job, have everybody else around you do their jobs and you’ll be fine,” Williams said.

Williams knows, having been part of the Sooners team that blew out Air Force 41-3 in 2001.

It sounds simple, former OU linebacker Teddy Lehman said.

But in practice, it’s far from it.

“The intricacy of it is all the other defensive variations that they give you. They all run the same plays — heavy dose of fullback dive, fullback trap, lead option, speed option, load option,” Lehman said. “You’re only going to get those handful of plays but they’re going to get to it in a lot of different ways.”

This year’s Oklahoma team gets a look at the unique offense when Army comes to town Saturday (6 p.m., pay-per-view).

On the surface, there appears to be very little similarities between Army’s run-first, run-often, pass-little offensive approach and the wideopen Air Raid offense started by Hal Mumme and Mike Leach

and tweaked by Lincoln Riley since his arrival in Norman, but Riley said there were plenty.

“They believe in what they do and do it at a high level,” Riley said. “There were a lot of years there where we thought, offensively, they were the team we were the most similar to at Texas Tech in distributing the balls and not having a thousand different plays and just trying to get good at a few things.

“It looks radically different, but the core beliefs are very similar.”

Riley has had some experience coaching against the attack, as East Carolina played Navy three times from 2010-12.

While Riley wasn’t part of the defensive staff at East Carolina, the thenPirates

head coach, Ruffin McNeill, is currently the Sooners’ assistant head coach and defensive tackles coach.

“There’s a lot of things that go into it because you do kind of have a push and pull of how much do you work a team like this, how much do you work the offensive schemes that you’re going to see more than every other opponent you play,” Riley said.

Lehman remembers working on Air Force early, spending short amounts of time on the option during preseason camp even though the Falcons were second on OU’s schedule.

Through three games, the Black Knights are running the ball nearly 83 percent of the time. They’re averaging just 13 pass attempts per game after averaging just five passes per game a year ago.

“There is definitely going to be a lot of opportunities for us inside backers

to make plays and make a lot of tackles,” middle linebacker Kenneth Murray said.

Riley said it took careful planning — stretching back to recruiting last year — to determine who on scout team would help the Sooners prepare.

“Your scout team does the best they can but they can never replicate the speed,” Lehman said. “They can’t give you the look of a team that runs that three hours a day, every day, all year long.”

Williams recalled that preparing for the Falcons in 2001, one defender was assigned to the dive, one to the quarterback and two to the potential pitch men.

“The thing that makes it difficult is for every given defense, it’s going to change who gets those players,” Lehman said.

Though Murray didn’t go into specifics, that echoes much of what he

said Monday.

“As long as you stay on that track and hone in on those keys, you should be good,” Murray said.

Williams had eight tackles in that 2001 game, three unassisted. Lehman was making his second career start in the game and finished with four tackles.

“It’s all about positioning,” Williams said. “When you’re playing against an option team, you have to be in the right place.”