One of football’s most famous drills is called the Oklahoma drill. It’s the drill that puts players across from each other in a three-point stance in an enclosed space and has them ram each other until someone’s thrown to the ground or out of play. It has many variations, and it often includes extra runners and blockers.
Why the Georgia Bulldogs have a drill called ‘Millennial Oklahoma’
Kirby Smart has a smart take on an old classic, adapted for modern football.
Photo by Michael Chang/Getty Images
It’s called “Oklahoma” because OU coach Bud Wilkinson popularized it in the 1940s. Traditionally, it’s involved head-to-head contact, which isn’t good.
But the drill still exists, and it seems like Georgia coach Kirby Smart has a good twist on it.
Offense isn’t what it used to be. The spread, with players dispersed all around the field, has taken over as the dominant scheme in the college game. Spread principles are all over the NFL, too. There are a few teams that still operate their offenses in tight spaces and try to mash their way to success from them, but there aren’t many.
Smart’s version of the drill, “Millennial Oklahoma” (yes, he named it after the younger generation’s popular title) is a modern adaptation.
Sometime since taking over at Georgia after the 2015 season, Smart presented the drill at a coaching clinic, and some of it’s the same as the classic Oklahoma drill. Players still ram into each other — “knock the shit out of” each other, as Smart frames it to coaches — to clear space for a teammate with the ball.
But the offensive players in the drill are aligned in a spread formation, so when the ball gets into someone’s hands, what’s being practiced is perimeter and not interior blocking. Both are still important, but this approach lets receivers work on blocking in space and lets defenders work on getting off blocks in space. Doing it on the inside is an entirely different thing.
The formation:
The quarterback’s on the right edge of the screen, and three receivers flank him to his right. The most inside man gets the ball. Two receivers engage two DBs, and one DB takes a run at the guy with the ball. It closely mimics modern college game situations.
“Oklahoma doesn’t exist in a box unless you’re playing certain teams anymore,” Smart tells the assembled coaches.
Offense is a lot different than it used to be. Millennial Oklahoma is a crafty way to change with it.
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