Originally published at: https://pistolsfiringblog.com/osu-favored-to-win-big-12-opener-over-west-virginia-by-7-points/
This could be closer than expected.
West Virginia has one of the best DL’s in the Big 12. Now OSU has lost 5 of our top 9 lineman. 3 guys who would have been starters and our best sub lineman in Farrell.
Galloway, Bray, Farrell, now Cole Birmingham and Hunter Anthony. Bray and Hunter Anthony original starters. Now lost Farrell, Birmingham our top 2 backups. (starters once we lost Bray and Galloway) Killer.
Our depth will be tested now. Hopefully we just find a way to block some of the best DTs in the league this week.
Is there no one capable of sleuthing their way around and finding out the status of Sanders?
If Gundy is THAT good at keeping secrets, he should have some government/CIA position instead of being a head coach.
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I’m no feeling really confident about it, but I’ll take the pokes in a 24-20 barn burner. There are just too many injuries and other variables to make me think they cover the spread or break the total point number.
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I’m surprised we’re not a 7 point dog.
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I’m taking the under on the point total. No way either team gets past 21.
Isn’t the point total 51.5? That’s why I said 24-20.
I wasn’t arguing with you Joe
I’m certain that the Pokes coaching staff is keeping Sanders status, good or bad, under wraps. The styles of Spencer vs. Shane are polar opposite so WVU has no idea who to prepare for. I like that Gundy is keeping Spencer’s status a priority secret.
Yes I understand that. Where I got confused is you said neither team is scoring over 21 so you were going to go under the point total. Wasn’t sure if you thought the total was 42 or under.
It’s not really a secret. Dude is in a boot and even if he does play he’s not going to be as effective as he can be.
Boot was to come off on Tuesday and he was to practice on Wednesday. Who knows if that happened or not but I’m betting he plays on Saturday even if he’s not 100%. That said, I would not mind seeing Illingworth start. I think the Tulsa game would have been closer to the spread if he had backed up Sanders to begin with. Typical Gundy, not understanding who the best backup QB is. Maybe this kid will be another Weeden, who Gundy overlooked initially.
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More creative playcalling por favor!
Their DBs aren’t that great.
One would think Illingworth’s brief, but oft-reported, performance last weekend would light a fire under Sanders. It wouldn’t bode well for Sanders if Illingworth and the Cowboy offense hung 50 on WVU this weekend. Kinda hard to make a change…
One game and the stigma around the team has gone from title contender to questioning if we can beat West Virginia at home. I get last week was shaky, but let’s take a deep breath for a second.
1.) It’s not ideal that it happened the first week of the season, but EVERYONE has bad weeks. There have been zero teams in my recollection that have dominated 12 games of football.
2.) WVU will for sure be better offensively than Tulsa. But let’s not act like they’re 300 yards and 30 points better. Tulsa had a 3,000 yard passer, 1,000 yard rusher, and 1,000 receiver returning along with practically their entire offense and they needed a handful of penalties committed by OSU just to score one single time. Also, WVU was picked 8th preseason for a reason. They don’t exactly have a will Grier-led offense.
3.) WVU beat a team that lost 60-zip vs Marshall. I’m putting less than an ounce of stock into the outcome of their first game.
4.) Bullock-led OSU was bad. Like, really bad. There was no excuse for their complete inability to get a first down. But, the Shane-led OSU moved the ball to a pace of 52 points on 520 yards of offense (#OnPaceGuy). Surely he’ll have a few Hiccups with it being his first full game, but even I’m extremely pessimistic and assume that he’ll be half as effective as he was last week, the defense should be able to hold WVU under 24 points.
I’m still of the mindset that it would be a big disappointment if OSU loses. WVU beats one blind junior high and all of the sudden they are surprisingly extremely confident about this game. Maybe that’s an advantage for OSU. I wouldn’t take the over if my life depended on it, but I think OSU covers the -7.
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Gundy better not pull some BS and start Bullock.
Just start Illingworth.
I don’t buy in to the Sanders hype. Injury prone. Turnover prone. Illingworth looked poised and confident.
Your taking them to cover the spread? After seeing that they struggled with a 4-8 non-power 5 team? You have more faith in Gundy and company than I do.
To be fair, OSU with Bullock and without Bullock were drastically different. On 5 drives without Bullock, they had 4 scores on 212 yards of offense. You average 42 yards per drive over a whole game and you’re looking at over 600 yards of offense. Their only non-scoring drive was the play where Hubbard fumbled. I also don’t see WVU holding Hubbard to 2.3 ypc, especially now that the defense can’t just leave 9 guys in the box and play run since we have someone at QB who can actually throw a football. And the line will be better, like I said it’s hard to run against a defense when you have zero passing threat, and almost all of the sacks they gave up with Bullock were because he just sat there holding the ball for 8-10 seconds. There’s a reason Illingworth never got sacked. He actually got rid of the ball. The game as a whole was awful because 75% of it consisted of Bullock at QB, but the 25% of the game that he wasn’t in, they mostly handled Tulsa. Every punt we had was with him in. Unless Shane gets hurt too we won’t see a Bullock-led offense this week. And we all saw what the defense did.
Even if Sanders and Bullock don’t play the fact of the matter is WV is going to have better athletes than Tulsa on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball. You say the OL will be better, but I don’t think you realize how difficult it is to establish an OL change with consistency in less than a week.
Not to mention the strength of the WV defense is going to be their DL. You also forget who the head coach for OSU is as well. He’s going to Pat Jones 2.0 the crap out of this thing, and try to establish the run first at all cost, instead of allowing the passing game (Which he may have the best WR in college football) to help establish the run.
Bullock had 13 pass attempts through nearly three quarters of play. That’s not very much at all, and it’s not very smart to leave a QB in the game for seven offensive drives that’s only completed 41 passing yards. I could of told you after two offensive drives that Bullock was not going to get the offense down the field to score at all.
The scary thing is knowing as a fan when a change needs to be made during the game to have some kind of offensive consistency when you have a dude on the sideline making 5 mil a year to make those same judgment calls. Shouldn’t have taken him seven offensive drives and a hurt OL to figure out that the run game would be inconsistent, and to give his other QB a chance to make something happen.
Gundy said “I just thought we shouldn’t panic and we were in a decent spot.” Well, that might work with Tulsa and lesser teams, but if you pull that same crap against a team with a speck of talent on defense you should know that as a coach you need to be prepared to give that same player two offensive drives instead of seven.