OFFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS?
OKLAHOMA COULD LAND TITLE WITH AWFUL DEFENSE
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – If you’re defined by the company you keep, that Oklahoma’s defense slots in nationally between Kansas and Indiana in the key metric of yards allowed per play, justifies the hand-wringing and consternation that accompanied this unit throughout the regular season.
The Sooners allow 6.03 yards per play, good for 101st in the Football Bowl Subdivision, and saw a steep decline in production as the schedule toughened in November. In comparison, the combined total of the rankings for the past nine national champions in the statistic is 98, with just two winners — 2014 Ohio State and 2010 Auburn — finishing out- side the nation’s top five in yards allowed per snap.
“I never want to say that’s acceptable, as a defensive player and as a leader,” said Oklahoma linebacker Kenneth Murray, the team’s leading tackler. “You always strive to be the best. But I also think you can’t hang your hat on stuff
like that.”
How college football views an individual defensive showing has changed in the past decade, with the primary barometer for success now based on perplay performance rather than total yards. As a rule, defenses face too many plays in a given contest to measure achievement based on the overall box score; instead, defenses gauge success, or lack thereof, by highlighting passing, rushing and total yardage across the numbers of snaps from the opposing offense.
“It’s kind of evolving in that direction a little bit,” Oklahoma offensive coordinator Cale Gundy said.
This is now a sport driven almost entirely by offense. Oklahoma ranks first nationally in yards gained per play. Alabama, the Sooners’ opponent in the Orange Bowl, ranks second. Clemson sits in third. Even still, Oklahoma’s defensive inefficiency stands out: Clemson, Alabama and Notre Dame rank first, seventh and eighth in the FBS, respectively, in yards allowed per snap.
Regardless of the metric, however, an Oklahoma championship would be unprecedented in modern history. Teams with similar issues on defense have won conferences and reached New Year’s Six bowls but never come this close to a national title — the Sooners aren’t quite demolishing the adage that defense wins championships, but they’re poking holes in the theory.
“You look at football games and their box scores on the weekends … 10 years ago, it wasn’t half that,” Oklahoma offensive lineman Ben Powers said. “It’s crazy how it’s changed.”
Oklahoma might represent the evolution of the sport as a whole, changes driven by the increase in tempo-based schemes, the precociousness of topranked prospects and a series of rule changes that tilted the balance of power away from defenses to the offensive side of the ball.
“There’s been a huge difference from when I started to now,” Alabama defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi said. “We’re going to still stay to the standard of Coach (Nick) Saban and this Alabama defense as best possible. We’re going to do everything we can not to adjust those standards.”
Spread concepts have seeped into every conference and every playbook, even at Alabama. The Crimson Tide began to lean toward tempo and wideopen sets under former offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin and have fully embraced the offense behind sophomore quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, with this year’s team on pace to set program records in yards gained per play and per game. Offenses across the FBS are averaging 5.79 yards per play, trailing only the FBS-wide 5.83 yards per play in 2016 for the highest mark in history.
The increased attention paid to targeting penalties has improved player safety, achieving the movement’s primary goal, but also impacted how teams approach tackling, especially downfield. Changes to the kickoff rule have pushed touchbacks out to the 25-yard line, giving offenses a slight head start on field position. The advent of the runpass option has been met with concern by defensive coaches, who bemoan the lack of attention paid to illegal-mandownfield penalties.
“I feel like over time it kind of became more of an offensive game,” Oklahoma running back Trey Sermon said.
College football has become the sort of game that fits the Sooners’ mode of operation. For better or worse, Oklahoma rides behind an offense that ranks among the most prolific in FBS history and offsets the ineptitude of a defensive unit that in previous eras might have cast the team out of the championship conversation long before the end of the regular season. In this era, the offense is simply so productive that it could carry Oklahoma beyond its negatives and to the top of the sport.
And instead of highlighting more traditional statistics, the Sooners’ defense harps on “how many times you can break serve,” said coordinator Ruffin McNeill, or how often Oklahoma can re- turn possession to its offense without allowing points, and on creating momentum-changing plays. For all of its warts, the defense did manufacture two moments that paced the team’s Orange Bowl berth: two defensive touchdowns in the win against West Virginia after Thanksgiving and the safety that propelled a win against Texas in the Big 12 Conference championship game.
“A lot of different stats I think need to be emphasized besides the scores, because they can score,” McNeill said.
The Sooners have already rewritten the script for how even a flawed, one-dimensional team can still advance to the doorstep of a national title. Offenses have taken over college football — it’s almost inevitable that this changing landscape would yield a champion such as Oklahoma, if not this specific Oklahoma team itself.
“As long as we win, I could care less,” Murray said. “That’s all that matters.”