The Oklahoma State Postmortem

There's so much to talk about here but at the same time not nearly enough.  The offense played one good quarter of football with two different quarterbacks, the defense looked lost, inept, and punchless the whole game, and the one spark of hope this season is out four weeks with an MCL (again!) sprain.

It's tough to pick a spot on where to start.  The offense decided it was a great idea to spot Oklahoma State 21 points in the first quarter with some terrible execution to start and a horribly thrown ball to the Big XII's best cornerback that resulted in a TAINT.

Say what you will about the gameplan but receivers were working themselves open early and Sam Richardson was getting the ball near them enough to drop it (sometimes) and other times missing them completely.  After Richardson got hurt a very green Grant Rohach was thrown into the mix.  While he played better than he did against Baylor it's still asking a lot of a quarterback to come in for relief and have success.  Unless that opponent is Kansas.

Defensively the team is just god awful and is now 117th nationally in total defense at 481.7 yards allowed per game.  That's good enough to be the worst BCS defense in the country.  For comparison the widely panned 2008 defense finished 111th in the nation with a paltry by comparison 451.8 yards allowed per game.  That's right folks, Wally Burnham loses two NFL linebackers and is now on pace to be worse than Wayne Bolt.  What the fuck happened?

What Worked on Saturday

This worked:

Quenton Bundrage's two touchdown receptions (he now has six on the year) worked, and that was about it.  I guess you can throw Shontrelle Johnson's performance in there as he finally looked close to form, but all that makes you realize is that a redshirt year this year would have been great for him and the offense.

What Didn't Work on Saturday

For the most part, everything else.  Receivers not named Bundrage dropped balls.  The offensive line blocked well enough to give Richardson protection early, but the offense wasn't on the same page.  The defense started Jevohn Miller.  No further analysis needed.

Song of the Week

Welcome to the rest of the season folks.  We're past the point of seeing a young team improve week to week like we should expect and are firmly into "what you see is what you get" territory.

OC Watch 2k13 - Week 1

From now until Courtney Messingham is shown the door I will bring in a profile of an offensive coordinator that I believe fits Iowa State's profile  This week we head back to the well that gave us Tom Herman: Rice.

Rice offensive coordinator John Reagan has the Owls ranked 15th nationally in rushing offense and is averaging 30.6 points per game.  Reagan came to Rice in 2010, which was a full season after Herman left, and immediately helped develop the run game that has the Owls sitting at 6-2 this season.  Prior to joining Rice, Reagan was the offensive line coach for five years at Kansas under Mark Mangino.  Quarterback Todd Reesing may have got the headlines in 2007 and 2008 but it was Kansas' Top 30 rushing attack that kept Reesing clean enough to make the offense explode.

Sagarin Rankings

Can This Team Make a Bowl Game Win Another Game?

Probably Kansas.  Maybe.  God I hope so.

In summary, this is fucking depressing.  Welcome to 2008 everybody!  Minus the offensive production.