Mike Gundy takes a jab at former assistants when discussing 2024 defense

Mike Gundy certainly talked his way into a few eyebrow-furrowing headlines at Big 12 Media Day this week, including one about his old defensive coordinators.

But he also made some interesting comments on the state of his actual football team as well, particularly on the defensive side. After finishing ninth in the country in scoring defense in 2021, Oklahoma State regressed a bit in 2022 and 2023, giving up more than four touchdowns’ worth of points per game to rank right around 90th in the country in scoring D for those two seasons.

However, in the second season under defensive coordinator Bryan Nardo, there’s optimism for big improvement.

“Well, we’re we’re gonna be better on defense,” Gundy assured reporters at media day. “Bryan Nardo, our coordinator, is in Year 2. I know he came from a smaller school, but there’s a comfort when you’re in a system year after year.”

Gundy expressed a slight bit of frustration at having to change coordinators over the years, but is confident in Nardo ahead of his second season.

“And we’ve had to change coordinators on that side of the ball at Oklahoma State. Guys have left and moved on and got better jobs, in their opinion. And so he’s more comfortable.”

When it comes to the personnel, Gundy loves the speed: “And we have some speed on defense. We can run,” he said before addressing his linebackers. He sees one A+ player in that room for the Cowboys.

“You know, you’re talking about our linebackers. The guy here, Nick Martin, had 150 tackles, whatever he did. It’s crazy. He loves to play football, he’s an old-school throwback guy, east Texas guy, just likes to run and hit. Hard to find guys like that nowadays. He loves to play football and he would do it for free.”

Next, Gundy detailed where OSU needs to imrpove, starting with better security in the back end.

“We have an experienced secondary. Last year at times, we give up big plays. And if you give up big plays, it’s just like turning the ball over on offense, because you didn’t make them go down the field. It was too easy for them. So we have to minimize the big plays and tackle better than we did last year early in the season.”

Mike Gundy learned his lesson last season on tackling and won’t be holding back on the tackling drills in practice this time around.

“We didn’t tackle good last year in the first three or four games, and that was my fault,” he admitted. “We didn’t practice hard enough. I got concerned about guys getting beat up. We didn’t tackle enough in practice. And it showed.

“I told the players, that’s my fault. I’m not going to make that mistake again this fall. Okay, we’re going to tackle hard in practice. We’re going to get ready to play.”