Oklahoma football: Alex Grinch is hungry for results

As Oklahoma football packs up the pads for spring practice, Alex Grinch isn’t pulling any punches on how far his group still has to go.

“Long way to go,” Grinch told the Daily Oklahoman. “But that’s the charge. That’s the job as coaches to make sure we take advantage of these next several months of summer ball — the eight hours (per week). The bulk of that is in the weight room, and we’ll use every last second of it, but there’s a little bit of football time that we get with them.”

While Oklahoma football fans would love to hear that Grinch has turned the defense into the 1985 Bears (or the 1985 Sooners for that matter), the truth is the distance he wants to go can’t be traveled in 15 practices. Heck, it might not be able to be traveled in one (or even two) years.

But, there is a goal. Grinch has a specific vision for what his group will look like when it’s successful. For the first time in a long time, Oklahoma dictating rather than reacting on defense. This isn’t a “bash Mike Stoops” article. Lord knows there are more than enough of those floating around the internet and print media. It’s simply a comparison from what the Sooners are doing and saying this spring against the previous few.

For far too long Oklahoma football was aimless on the defensive side of the ball, always waiting for better players to come along and constantly a step behind the innovative offenses of the Big 12. They tried to be many different things and by doing so weren’t good at anything.

For the past few springs all the news coming out of the Oklahoma football camp was positive. This was going to be the year the Sooners defense turned the corner. Only for fans to be disappointed come the fall as the group slipped further and further from the dominant days of the early 2000s.

That’s not Grinch. And that’s not this year’s Oklahoma defense. The new coordinator isn’t going to pump sunshine for the media and tell them these guys are close to turning a corner and he isn’t going to give a bunch of excuses as to why things aren’t getting done.

Make no mistake about it. All of his comments about where the defense is are meant to be heard by the players. It’s a challenge to get better over the summer and start fall camp further along than they are today.

Grinch expects to field a top five defense. He came to Oklahoma to do that and he isn’t going to be satisfied until he does. In a way that’s the best news Oklahoma football fans have received on the defensive side of the ball in a long time.