All about timing

John Shinn
The Norman Transcript

August 09, 2006 12:23 am

— • OU’s young receivers find second year much easier

Timing is everything for an offense. A quarterback knows he only has so much time before he has to throw the football. The precision of pass routes must be ingrained into receivers like soldiers learning to march.
When the timing is in perfect unison, football looks like a simple game. When it isn’t, it just looks like 11 guys running around.
Oklahoma wide receiver Juaquin Iglesias remembers what it was like last August when everything seemed to be speeding by at 200 miles per hour.
“Last year we were all young and didn’t really feel like we understood everything,” he said.
He had a good reason to feel out of place.
At this point last August, Iglesias, Malcolm Kelly and Manuel Johnson were wide-eyed freshmen who’d never experienced the speed of Big 12 football. Plus there was a vast playbook that had to be memorized.
To them it was like getting everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them in a couple of days. Even knowing where to stand in the huddle took a few seconds of deliberation.
But a lot has changed over the course of a year.
“Now we’re all on the same page,” Iglesias said.
It’s a page the three young receivers, who will all be sophomores this season, have memorized.
That’s a good thing for the Sooners.
With Paul Thompson making the move back to quarterback after spending the last six months as a receiver, the one thing he needs is precision.
It was hard to achieve when he was going through the quarterback competition with Rhett Bomar a year ago. Just because he knew where the ball was supposed to go didn’t necessarily mean the receivers were thinking the same thing.
It took a while for the young group to catch up with the rest of the offense.
Clearly, they got better as the season went along.
Kelly, Iglesias and Johnson combined for 62 catches and five of OU’s 10 touchdown receptions as freshmen. Kelly was the leading receiver with 33 and all three averaged over 14 yards per catch.
But receivers coach Kevin Sumlin said it is time for the group to enter the second stage in their maturation process.
“You spend so much time the first year just figuring out what the plays are, and there’s a lot to remember,” he said. “But to become good, that has to become second nature.
“They’re starting to reach that point where they are comfortable. They know the coverages, they know the alignments. They should be in a better position. These guys have played in big games. We talk about maturity all the time. What maturity means is giving us something we can count on every day.”
Thompson has seen what a difference a year can make in the six days the Sooners have been on the practice field.
“You know where they’re going to be and when they’re going to be there,” he said. “They know when they have to change up a route and they’re aware of everything and making good decisions.”
But there’s another reason Thompson’s confidence in the group has swelled. He expected to be a wide receiver this season. He spent the entire offseason working out with them and studying film with them.
There’s a bond that might have been missing before.
“Paul knows what’s going on and knows exactly what routes the receivers are running because he’s done all of it,” Kelly said. “That’s a good thing for all us.”
And, perhaps, for OU’s future.
John Shinn366-3536jshinn@normantranscript.com