Others would disagree with you Air Raid acolytes unite to root for Oklahoma to win it all
After a year of success and Leach’s departure to take the Texas Tech head coaching job, Stoops and then-offensive coordinator Mark Mangino won a national title with it in 2000.
Is Oklahoma’s air raid renaissance enough of an overhaul?
Winning championships requires elite units, and not on just one side. A fantastic offense paired with a weak defense won’t cut it. What made the 2000s Sooners regular participants in the BCS Championship was the way Stoops incorporated aggressive offensive strategies like the air raid or up-tempo.
Good coaches adjust to the talent they’ve recruited, or for new coaches; inherited. People always think of the passing game when the Air Raid is mentioned…but Holgorsen will run much more than people think. He had at WVU when he had great depth at the RB position. I think we’ll see that this year as well with our depth. It’ll depend of course on how well the line blocks, and how much air the defense needs on the sidelines, something Briles Jr could never grasp, as great as his offense was last year.
It was the 1984 BYU Cougars that went 13-0 under Lavell Edwards and won a mythical national title.
As I said, that championship was controversial, simply because BYU’s only win over a ranked team that season was over a Pitt team that proved to be a bust and went 3-7-1.
Nevertheless, the point remains the same: assuming that BYU ran a version of the Air Raid, the 1984 team would indeed prove that the Air Raid can win a national title.
I think that the jury may still be out on whether those teams were true “Air Raid” teams though.
The Air Raid of today is more similar to the Run & Shoot than what BYU ran in 1984 with the Air Coryell Offense. The Air Raid incorporated the Option route concept from the Run & Shoot with the aggressive vertical attack of the Air Coryell offense along with the short passing routes from the West Coast Offense. This is what the Air Raid is today.
We now have the RPO aspect being installed into the Air Raid, which really starts to push the Air Raid more closely to the original concept/ideology of the Run & Shoot. The Run & Shoot that UH ran in the 80’s and 90’s and Hawaii ran in the 2000’s was a bastardized version of the Run & Shoot that only focused on the passing concepts while completely ignoring the running concepts.
The manner in which Jenkins used the run game was similar in the way the West Coast Offense uses the run game. They use the passing game to spread the defense out to open up the running lanes.
Weatherspoon did a great job, but the Run & Shoot that was utilized was taking advantage of the passing concepts that were ahead of it’s time. If Jenkins had utilized the offense in the manner it was meant, Weatherspoon, his backups and the QB would have higher rushing yards stats. Making it a more balanced team. And most of the credit for the Rushing yards go to Weathersoon and not the play calling. Weatherspoon rushed for 1,000 each season, but as soon as he leaves the highest rusher is 397 yards the following year.
I believe if Pardee had stuck around a little longer at UH, the Run & Shoot could have really developed properly and Jenkins would have been able to set things up on the offensive side. Jenkins relied too much on the pass and teams eventually caught on.
I don’t think teams “caught on” as much as our team got significantly less talented due to weak recruiting, probation, and a head coach who needed to be an OC. The offense was always going to struggle against teams with exceptional linebackers, but most defenses couldn’t hang.
The absolute greatest thing about that video is watching the entire Texas secondary in the bench area barfing their guts out…literally blowing beets everywhere.
Yeah, we had some pretty good backs in those years. Bryce Beall, Mike Hayes, Charles Sims ( am I missing some?) I’m definitely looking forward to a good run game and balanced attack.
They are basic plays but the way the receivers react depends on how the defense lines up. So a play called Early- 48 cross may have all the receivers crossing the field at various depths but if the defense is lined up close the receivers on the line of scrimmage then the receivers run a different route. It’s all about reading defenses and adjusting accordingly. That’s the beauty of it and I like it a lot.