Fri, May 16 2008
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Published April 20, 2008 12:40 am - An uneventful and injury-filled spring kept OU’s offense grounded By about any standard, Oklahoma just concluded one of the most dull spring practice seasons in recent memory. Without a quarterback competition to scrutinize and with many starters being held out due to nagging injuries, there just wasn’t much for fans or media to put under a microscope. But boring doesn’t mean bad for the Sooners. Defense the story for OU this spring John Shinn The Norman Transcript An uneventful and injury-filled spring kept OU’s offense grounded
By about any standard, Oklahoma just concluded one of the most dull spring practice seasons in recent memory. Without a quarterback competition to scrutinize and with many starters being held out due to nagging injuries, there just wasn’t much for fans or media to put under a microscope. But boring doesn’t mean bad for the Sooners. The 12 practices and three scrimmages they conducted over five weeks were productive. “We still made good progress,” OU coach Bob Stoops said. Offense wasn’t a major concern going into the spring. It’s set at quarterback with Sam Bradford. Last year’s offensive line returned intact, and all but one of its leading receivers and two of last season’s three leading rushers will be back. What OU did was tinker this spring. They spent a lot of it working on a no-huddle offense it would like to unveil in the fall. The up-tempo offense has become the rage throughout the Big 12 Conference. Texas Tech, Missouri and Oklahoma State all run it at a high level and the Sooners would like to add it to their arsenal. The goal is to take advantage of the offensive talent OU can put on the field by being able to run more plays. The only problem is it requires making play calls at the line of scrimmage and doing just about everything at a faster pace. Offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson admitted nothing is set in stone. “You still have to execute,” he said. “Our judgment will be based on can we execute cleanly and do we understand what we’re trying to do.” At times, it really looked like OU was in the infant stages with the offensive. It only scored a handful of touchdowns in three scrimmages and seemed to violate the old tenant of sports of “play fast, but don’t play in a hurry.” It will be up to the players to see how much they can improve and get used to scurrying to the line of scrimmage as they practice without the coaches this summer. “There’s a lot of little things we can improve on,” Bradford said. “We’ve made some major changes in our offense, but we’ve progressed and improved a lot. This summer is going to be a big key if we want to be where we want to be when two-a-days start.” The defense didn’t have the luxury of tinkering this spring. It had too many holes to plug. Most of the losses from last season’s Big 12 championship team were on that side of the ball. 
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