Oklahoma football: Sooners’ Air Raid boosted by bevy of booming backs

Oklahoma football built its  long-standing reputation as one of the blue bloods of the college game largely on the strength of running the football down the throats of its opponents.

Despite the heavy emphasis in 21st century college football of wide-open aerial attacks, the Sooners, for one, have never abandoned the notion of bringing in and incorporating high-quality running backs as part of that offensive evolution. The OU running back group for 2018 is a prime example.

Redshirt junior Rodney Anderson is the clear No. 1, but the Crimson and Cream are blessed with a talented and deep roster of quality running backs, right out of the historic Oklahoma mold.

Six of the Sooners’ seven national championships have been won by Oklahoma teams that ran the football with abandon. Even in OU’s championship game victory over Florida State in the 2000 season (featuring a pass-first, run-second style of offense), the Sooners rushed for 92 of their 306 yards of total offense.

Sooner history is laden with some of the greatest college running backs of all-time. The likes of Billy Vessels and Clendon Thomas in the 1950s, Steve Owens in the late 1960s, Greg Pruitt, Joe Washington and Billy Sims in the 1970s and, of course, Quentin Griffin, Adrian Peterson, DeMarco Murray and Samaje Perine in the 2000s. The list goes on and on, beginning with the great OU teams under legendary head coach Bud Wilkinson, the man credited with putting Oklahoma football on the national map to stay.

For most of the first 100 years of Oklahoma football, and certainly over the final three decades of the last century, Sooner teams showed an aversion to throwing a forward pass, unless absolutely necessary. Former Oklahoma alum and All-American quarterback Darrel Royal summed it up this way:

"“Three things happen when you throw the football, and two of them are bad.”"

That quote could just as easily come out of Barry Switzer’s mouth or any other Sooner head coach before Bob Stoops arrived on the scene in 1999 and brought Mike Leach on board as offensive coordinator.

The run-pass comparison between the 1998 season, the year before Stoops became head coach, and 1999 is a case in point of how the Sooners’ offensive philosophy changed, and for the better.

In 1998, the last of John Blake’s three seasons as head coach of the Sooners, OU averaged 16.5 passes per game, compared with 47.9 run plays.

The following season, that ratio completely flipped with Leach directing the offense. Sooner quarterbacks  averaged 46.5 pass attempts in 1999 for 321.7 yards per game. Meanwhile, the Oklahoma offense averaged 26.9 running plays for 105 yards. Welcome to the unveiling of what became the Air Raid offense, with spread formations and wide-open, quick-strike aerial blitzkriegs.

Even though Stoops’, and subsequently Riley’s, offensive philosophy and planning was different than those who went before him at Oklahoma, he was still a strong proponent of establishing a strong running game. He knew that without the ability to advance the ball on the ground, the Sooners’ passing game would not be nearly as effective.

Quentin Griffin and Kejuan Jones in the early 2000s were followed by the uber-talented Adrian Peterson, Allen Patrick and Chris Brown, then came DeMarco Murray, and more recently the backbreaking duo of Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon, all of whom produced impressive rushing resumes as part of a offense that was heavily endowed in throwing the football.

Perine became the career rushing leader at Oklahoma and set an NCAA single-game rushing record (with a 427-yard performance against Kansas) at a time when the Sooner offense was setting program records in the passing and receiving departments.

A year ago, while the Sooners were establishing multiple passing records with Baker Mayfield leading the charge, Anderson and freshman Trey Sermon accounted for nearly 2,000 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns.

Both Anderson and Sermon are back again in 2018, and they’ve got lots of company along with them. There is such a competition going on for playing time behind Anderson and Sermon that former No. 1 running back Abdul Adams elected to transfer (he’s now at Syracuse).

Sooner coaches were very high on redshirt freshman Kennedy Brooks, but he injured his shoulder in preseason drills a year ago and was forced to miss the season. He’s back and ready to go in 2018, along with the speedy T.J. Pledger, a four-star recruit ranked as the No. 5 running back in the country in the 2018 class by Rivals.com.

And let’s not forget about dual-threat quarterback Kyler Murray, who is probably more dangerous with what he can do with his legs than his underrated arm, and senior Marcelias Sutton, who also is extremely capable as a runner, but is used largely on kickoff returns.

So, in paraphrasing the immortal words of Mark Twain: “Rumors of the demise of the Oklahoma running game are greatly exaggerated.” It’s not only alive…it’s thriving.