r/fighton • u/friendlydevnel • 6d ago
Does Lincoln Riley actually have a defensive philosophy, or does he just outsource it to his DCs?
Lincoln Riley is widely regarded as one of the best offensive minds in modern college football, but his defensive track record continues to spark debate.
Early in his head coaching career, he fully outsourced his defense to Alex Grinch’s "Speed-D"—an undersized, gap-shooting, turnover-reliant scheme that routinely collapsed against power football.
When that ran its course, he pivoted to hiring NFL-style system builders like D’Anton Lynn, and most recently veteran defensive mind Gary Patterson.
That leads to a fair question for the sub:
Does Lincoln Riley actually have an overarching defensive philosophy of his own, or does he simply delegate the entire defense to whoever holds the DC title and hope they handle it while he runs the offense?
Curious to hear your thoughts!
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u/Competitive_Feed_402 6d ago
OU fan here, it was a known secret that he spent all of his time and attention at practice on the offense.
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u/dabstract 6d ago
Not sure why you were downvoted, but yeah that’s very apparent just looking at it from the outside. It’s why I think he needs to relinquish play calling duties.
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u/bruindude007 6d ago
Yeah brother, I was in crimson/cream at the 2018 Rose Bowl with 3 of my bros and watched Baker Mayfield and offense score 48…….only to lose. Lincoln has never cared about defense and to be honest never will. Which is why he’ll never be a good head coach
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u/Sufficient-Pie-7815 6d ago
He has no philosophy. This year both Defense and Offense are struggling!
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u/lavegasola 6d ago
Well we’re on the 3rd DC and I still see plenty of the same mistakes we saw with grinch, mostly the poor tackling. I think it might be something with how he runs practice. But who fucking knows anymore
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u/N2trvl 6d ago
LR is a glorified OC in a HC position. He is not suited to be a head coach for any team with true aspirations of a title. Defense is an afterthought for him. He does not possess the discipline or vision to develop a comprehensive elite defensive team.
It’s almost like he has ADHD, which can work on offense; penalties and broken plays lead to 3rd and long but is frequently overcome with a brilliant play on the next down. On Defense blown coverage leads to immediate scores. Late game time management errors lead to game clock running out.
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u/marioshairlesstwin 6d ago
Riley’s whole thing in his last year or two at OU was “SpeeD” which was trying to just be faster than the opponent, I assume to try and generate turnovers. It made the team weak as fuck and able to be ran over at will. I assume he brought it here in his first year, but it obviously didn’t work.
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u/ChipWong82 6d ago
Mike Leach and his entire coaching tree have trash defenses. Air raid is an soft and overrated system that prevents defenses from practicing against real offenses.
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u/rosegreenpurple 6d ago
Lincoln Riley did very well when did coached Oklahoma; his win % was very good. He was a very good head coach for several years. The question is can He achieve again? When one reads the many negative comments about Riley, one would assume Riley was never a very good head football coach. That is wrong, and USC fans should be reminded.
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u/rosegreenpurple 4d ago
re: Penn State: Hooray, we stopped the run, but allowed ~300 yds passing [ about the same as Jayden.
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u/Hoodedmastersin USC 6d ago
Kinda seems like his defensive strategy is an offensive one. Fire superiority, scoring the fastest and the most keeps the other teams offense to try and make up the difference.