Josh Huepel looking like a candidate for open jobs

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Josh Huepel looking like a candidate for open jobs

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I wonder if he has an out clause for the coming ncaa issues

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DALLAS — Bob Stoops said he wanted to hire an offensive coordinator who had a system in place.

He did that today, hiring East Carolina offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley.

Riley’s system is the “Air Raid” offense, the same offense that Mike Leach first installed under Stoops in 1999 and used successfully at Texas Tech. Riley’s “Air Raid” — he learned it under Leach as the Red Raiders’ wide receivers coach — has evolved over time, of course, but that’s the offense that Sooner Nation can now embrace.

All of which is a bit curious.

Josh Heupel was Leach’s very first “Air Raid” pilot at OU. Set every Sooner record there was in 1999 and 2000, and led OU to its only national championship of the last 30 years.

And yet, when Stoops became enamored with Johnny Manziel’s freestyle quarterbacking after Manziel won the Heisman and Texas A&M beat the Sooners’ brains out in the Cotton Bowl, Stoops ordered Heupel, then his offensive coordinator, to discard the “Air Raid” he had largely mastered and figure out how to copy what the Aggies do.

Which, of course, OU never did.

Simulating Manziel in bowl practices is one thing, but telling Trevor Knight to go out and be Manziel on game days is something else entirely. Knight wasn’t Manziel, the Sooners are thin on backups who can do it, and Stoops lost his nerve. Instead, they changed offenses but never really committed to doing one thing or the other. And when Heupel did try to commit to the read-option game, it wasn't effective.

Those are the real reasons Oklahoma’s offense was so aimless and lost the last two seasons. So Stoops fired Heupel, then replaced him with someone who runs pretty much the same offense that Heupel wanted to run in the first place. Strange.

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