Tulsa's Tre Lamb met with reporters this week as the 3-1 Golden Hurricane get ready for Thursday night's home game against North Texas, and a question about scripting the opening drive turned into one of the better explanations of the play-calling chess match you'll hear from a head coach this fall.
Lamb was asked how a staff balances probing a defense early with being aggressive enough to score on the first series.
"Play calling is like being a fighter pilot, rights?" Lamb said. "Like you're always on his tail. You're always trying to get your shot in, but you know, at any second you can get shot down as well. So you got to pick your moments."
"You got to break tendencies, too. Like, you can't just take shots from the plus 40. If that's the only place you're taking shot plays or running trick plays, that's a problem," Lamb said. "You can't just run it out of 12 personnel and throw it out of 10. You got to move your back alignment around. You got to hide your tight end alignments. You got to shift. You got to motion. You got to change tempos. There's a lot that goes into it."
"Sometimes as coaches, we make it harder than it is," Lamb said. "Sometimes we need to get our best players the ball on those first 10 plays. Like, let's get Jimmy two touches... and let's see what happens. So right now, I think we're probably outsmarting ourselves a little bit."
Jimmy is receiver Jimmy Calloway, one of four playmakers Lamb rattled off by name.
Lamb called the script "a collaborative effort," with the staff meeting every week to hash out situations and first plays of the game. Kevin Barbay is in his first season as Tulsa's offensive coordinator, with Ty Darlington in his second season as co-OC. "This week we wanted to take a shot first play and we did. We got sacked," Lamb said. "So then you got to punt."
Tulsa is coming off its first loss of the season, 34-6 at Arkansas. Dexter Williams II got the start with Baylor Hayes nursing a knee injury, and Tulsa finished with two turnovers and nine penalties for 64 yards. "Offensively, we got nothing going," Lamb said after that game.
"What does their coordinator do on first down, P and 10, first drive of the game? Are they aggressive?" Lamb said. "Josh, our defensive coordinator, he wants to feel the game out and see how it goes. Some coordinators want to blitz you and put some heat on the quarterback early. So it's certainly a cat and mouse game, but it's my favorite part of the sport, like trying to figure out what the other person's going to do."
Lamb played quarterback at Tennessee Tech, then coached quarterbacks there and at Mercer before becoming Tennessee Tech's offensive coordinator in 2018. He went 20-20 in four seasons as head coach at Gardner-Webb and 7-5 in his lone season at East Tennessee State before taking the Tulsa job. After a 4-8 debut in 2025, Tulsa opened this season with a 24-10 win over Oklahoma State and won its first three games before the loss in Fayetteville.
Every shot play you call leaves you exposed, and every tendency you don't break is a target the other guy's already locked onto. Lamb's fix is about as old-school as it gets: get the ball to your best players early and make the defense deal with them.
Tulsa (3-1) gets a chance to put that into practice Thursday night when North Texas comes to Skelly Field on ESPN.
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