Truth Hurts: Can college football’s QB guru work his Heisman magic again?

Lincoln Riley’s Oklahoma program has produced two straight Heisman winners and No. 1 draft picks. Now, Jalen Hurts arrives with big shoes to fill. (1:52)

Lincoln Riley’s voice drips with contempt. The 35-year-old Oklahoma Sooners coach is describing a failed play — from 1999. It’s not surprising that he can remember the details. His high school coach swears that Riley has a photographic memory, says he could watch film once and predict what the opposing team was going to do, on offense and on defense.

But this play? Heck, it didn’t even count. It was a slant pass late in a scrimmage, intended only to set up an easy TD for a senior wide receiver who didn’t play much. And though the ball was on the money, a perfect spiral, it sailed right through the receiver’s hands. “That’s why the guy didn’t play,” Riley says, squinting at the memory. Even worse: The deflection floated straight to an opposing linebacker, who picked it off and sprinted back upfield. Now the QB was really pissed off. Here we go, he thought, throwing an interception because we’re trying to get this kid a touchdown.

That quarterback was Riley himself, at the time a sophomore at Muleshoe High School. The Mules were playing Palo Duro at Dick Bivins Stadium in Amarillo, Texas. And even though it was a scrimmage, and the play meaningless, none of that mattered in the moment to the 15-year-old QB with a competitive streak. Riley, who also played defensive end, chased the linebacker down the sideline until he caught him, then tackled him.

“I cleaned him up pretty good,” Riley says. They both went down hard. But when Riley tried to get up, he couldn’t feel his right arm. It was dislocated. “All busted up.”

Surgery didn’t heal the shoulder completely. And though Riley managed the Mules’ offense well enough throwing sidearm to lead Muleshoe to the state semifinals as a senior, “I was never the same thrower after that,” he says.

Twenty years later, Riley recalls this story from a leather couch framed by three giant Gothic arches in the middle of an ornate office the size of a hotel lobby. At either end of the couch, on wood tables, rest the two most recent Heisman Trophies, awarded to Riley’s past two quarterbacks. Kyler Murray’s is on his right, Baker Mayfield’s to his left.

Mind you, Riley’s not pulling an Uncle Rico, ruing what might have been if he could only fling that ol’ pigskin around like he used to. He’s marveling at how there’s no way he’d be on this couch, in this office, between these Heismans, if he hadn’t been “lucky” enough to destroy his shoulder, give up on his dreams and start chasing a different one.
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