10 Thoughts on Oklahoma State's 27-13 Season-Opening Victory against Central Arkansas

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Originally published at: https://pistolsfiringblog.com/10-thoughts-on-oklahoma-states-27-13-season-opening-victory-against-central-arkansas/

On quarterbacks, running struggles and more.

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  1. I don’t feel as if we got enough of Rangel. Dude seemed fairly on point with his throws and knew when he needed to run or avoid being tackled. I didn’t get that vibe with Bowman at all. Although I’ll give Gundy credit for a good 4th quarter, I couldn’t tell you he’s the guy going forward. I think Bowman looked the least impressive of the three tonight.

  2. Kasey Dunn really needs to get his head out of his a55. This is year four with him and it just seems like the same ole same ole. It’s the same exact thing every game for a run. Let’s go a yard or two with a cloud of dust. While the running game looked better in the 4th this is UCA after all. It’s not like we ran for 4.8 yard per rush against Texas or OU. On the passing end of it, it’s either a deep ball, screen pass, slant route. Not exactly any other creativity on offense.

  3. All I heard all summer long from the homers was how good or much improved the OL was going to be. If that’s the case I didn’t see it tonight. If you have to wait until the 4th quarter to make a push against UCA to gain positive rush yards it’s not exactly a great sign of improvement. QB protection seemed alright and at times seemed nonexistent. Makes me wonder what the hell Dickey and the OL do everyday during the week.

  4. I thought the defense was fairly solid. Some missed tackles and questionable coverage at times. Not too many big plays given up. Then again, as I’ve said before, this is UCA. It’s not Texas or OU.

  5. Special teams looked really good. They played about as good of a game as you could ask them to. Blocked field goals are always a good thing.

Overall- defense looks alright, offense sucks, and special teams looks solid. I was a big proponent of firing both Dunn and Dickey last season, and I still feel that way. On a positive note though, I’d rather have a 27-13 victory instead of losing at home to an FCS school.

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Maybe Gundy decided to go through the offensive depth chart backwards today? Just to screw with everyone’s head.
They started with Rangel & the 3rd string offense, then Bowman & the 2nd team, and finally Gunnar and the full 1st string crew when things got too close for comfort.
That would explain why Ollie didnt get touches until Gunnar came in.

Either way… Gunnar’s offense > Rangel & Bowman. It wasn’t close. Start Gunnar.

And thank God our defense held it’s own most the game. Tough game to watch overall.

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I’m sure your job is much more difficult than it seems, but from the outside looking in it appears easy. For the past 10 years you’ve only had to copy/paste the same 10 thoughts and change the players’ names. Couldn’t get the run game going, offensive lines, not the start we hoped for…

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Let’s call a duck a duck, the run blocking was pathetic but it would help if they spread the O-line out a bit. To me Elijah Collins looked like he had better burst and was more effective than Jaden Nixon.

We haven’t had a good O-line since Joe Wickline left. Sounds like a CD that has a scratch and plays the same part of a song over and over…but if it ain’t the truth then oSu’s official colors are yellow and purple.

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RE 1, I wasn’t overly impressed. That pick wasn’t good. He made some decent throws though, but to me he got outplayed by Gunnar, as did Bowman. But having said that, is it because UCA’s defense was getting winded by then because I’m sure they don’t have the depth of a FBS Power 5 team???
RE 2, I still think Gumby has too much input on what plays we run. Can’t have anything new except we finally threw to a TE. Opponents coaches watch film, they know our tendencies which haven’t changed much since Holgorsen came in as O-coordinator. I was surprised we threw to a TE, but should’ve went there more in this game. But Dunn should get a fair share of the blame. You’re correct, we do need to be running slants, hooks, look-ins in the red zone to TE, and other passes across the middle.
RE 3 I think it was more idealism than anything. There had to be a reason why K-State fired Dickey, he’s clearly not the answer but ole Mike won’t ever fire him so we’re stuck w/ below average O-lines till Gumby is gone.

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I thought Dickey was hired by Gundy after Snyder resigned at Kansas St.

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Marshall: hey just noting that the Cowboy pass stats of 30-48 304 1/1 computes to 118 passer rating which is really below average to poor. I mean Spencer Sanders was 128 last year. We need to be over 140 and into the 150s to have a run at the title.

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I bet our outside/inside passing split is at least 80/20. Which is absurd. Just one more reason why I’m in the fire Dunn fan club.

Gundy did a better job of finding the open WRs than either of the other two QBs, but he’s clearly the least ‘talented’. He had a noticeably slower release than the other two, but all 3 imo could be serviceable if they got support from their OC through better play calling. Maybe sprinkle in a little more motion to give the qb an easy man/zone read, run some man-beater crossers, occasionally attack the middle to keep the safeties honest, etc.

Finally try something, anything different on the O-line as the current plan hasn’t worked. I don’t care what it is. Go under center. Widen the splits. Whatever. If these players aren’t good enough to run our current system, which its clear they aren’t based on the past couple years, then show your a good coach and adapt your system to something they can run. But unfortunately, this feels to me to be beyond our coaches’ capabilities.

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We weren’t going to open the playbook up in this game by a long shot. Run your basic offense, keep it simple. OL needs to get their chit together. If they do everything else falls into place. Ollie only getting a few carries isn’t hard to understand, it’s a long season. Those guys get beat up quickly
Eleven more games to go
One thing Gunnar adds is being able to run with the ball, something I knew we would miss from Sanders

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We ran our old offense for almost 3 full quarters (sure looked familiar to me!) with zone blocking and a lot of passes to the flats. Apparently, we didn’t want to show any of the gap blocking schemes in this game. The gash runs in the 4th quarter were off gap blocks and the O-line opened some huge holes. Who knows how Rangel or Bowman would have done with a few gap blocking runs mixed in. What we ran for 3 quarters is not what our offense will look like later.

Same with the defense - we ran strictly the 3-man front all night. I don’t remember a single play where we had a 4-man front. If we did any 4-man it was not much.

Classic OSU - we play very vanilla the first game so we don’t “show anything” for later opponents.

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Collin Oliver was an after-thought to the season-opener. And Collin Oliver should never be an after-thought.

Moving Oliver to LB was probably the wrong thing to do; let’s admit the mistake and get him back to DE as soon as possible.

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He can’t play DE in a 3-3-5. He’s only 235. They would run at him every play until we took him out. Most our ends now are 260+. Even though he’s a LB, he will rush more. Think Lawrence Taylor. I still think he will be disruptive in the pass game.

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This is an over simplification, but this team cannot handle complicated thinking and neither can our coaches. In ONE THROW, Gunnar Gundy won the starting QB1 job in my opinion. His lone deep ball had accuracy and touch. Neither was on many of the Rangel/Bowman passes. Gunnar is also the better runner of the three. Time to hand him the reins and see. You have to have ONE quarterback to be consistent. Not three. You need to develop your starter over the next two games, not decide on a starter.

As for Nardo, another of Gundy’s project hires into coordinator position. If he grows into the job, he will move on and if he doesn’t we are stuck with overmatched coaching for several seasons. To hire Nardo and give him the coordinator salary is slapping his entire defensive staff in the face. The majority of our coaches made more than did Nardo last season. Now, he is suddenly brought in and elevated above them in authority and pay scale. What a moronic move on behalf of the general manager. In restaurant terms, you just went to Waffle House and hired their line cook to be your head Chef, and started him above the sous chef(s) that have been with you for years and contributed mightily to any success you have had.

Maybe getting close to Gundy’s retirement, and recurring visits to Waffle House!!

GO POKES!! :cowboy_hat_face: :football: :cowboy_hat_face: :football:
:cowboy_hat_face:

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My post should have been in reply to yours!! Sorry I didn’t read it first. Completely agree!!

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Just don’t have any difference makers on this team. Our two best players are just good college players. Recruiting is a downfall for gundy and it shows more and more as time goes on and time has been going too long. Gundy way back in the day use to be able to recruit a really good threesome with a good offensive line. He seemed to be able to get a quarterback, running back and receiver above average. Gundy hasn’t had the threesome type of players in a long time.

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You’re correct. Dickey wasn’t fired, and for whatever reason it is, his OL products produced more fruit than any lines he’s had while being at OSU. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the fact that K State’s schemes traditionally differ from OSU’s.

The fact of the matter is this is year five with Dickey on the team, and outside the year he had Chuba Hubbard his lines, majority of the time, haven’t done squat. I keep hearing excuses for injuries the last three years. It was evident Saturday night that the OL woes are more than just injuries.

I agree with Teatown on this one. I think it would be more beneficial to split the offensive line out just a bit. There were almost no running lanes with how the OL was set. I understand if the defense lines the box with seven to eight defenders or so, but a lot of times we struggled with just dealing with a four to five man front from the UCA defense.

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I’ll disagree. Based on the inconsistencies I’ve seen from this OL over the last decade outside of a few odd years. I would say this is our offense going forward. Even if it’s not, you should still be able to win comfortably against an FCS school running basic concepts. You’re giving too much credit to an OC that hasn’t had a top 30 offense since he’s been the OC here (year four).

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Lol yeah. Same thing is said every year we come close to losing to someone we have no business almost losing to.

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Ragels longest pass wasnt that good. Short floater.

Dickey was let going when the new coach bought his own coaches with him.

I dnt see much to agree with you but i would like to see some comback passes.

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