Mike Gundy believes recent success is due to offensive line

Oklahoma State has played much better on offense over the past three weeks after a disastrous performance against South Alabama in mid-September.

The Cowboys made an obvious change following the 33-7 loss to the Jaguars as they moved to Alan Bowman as the full-time starter at quarterback, instead of rotating multiple QBs. As of late, Oklahoma State has also started dividing up its touches to running backs differently, with Ollie Gordon taking over the main role.

Cowboys head coach Mike Gundy was asked at his press conference this week if he regrets not turning to Bowman and Gordon earlier.

“I don’t ever revisit things going backwards, but the best way to illustrate it is our offensive line has played considerably better in the last month,” Gundy said. “It has nothing to do with the quarterback or the running back.”

Gundy added that the Oklahoma State offensive line has been playing better, in part due to the coaching staff putting the group in a better position to be successful. The Cowboys have won back-to-back games against Kansas and Kansas State.

“I think it’s a credit to us coming up with concepts that we think our guys can execute and asking them to do it in a repetitive manner over and over and over,” Gundy said.

Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy provides initial analysis of West Virginia

Oklahoma State has a chance to win its third straight game coming up this weekend when it plays at West Virginia.

Doing so won’t be easy, though, according to Gundy. He spoke about the Mountaineers earlier this week, starting with quarterback Garrett Greene and the WVU offense.

“Offensively, they’re very similar to what they’ve done, obviously, with him, his packages – close to what it was,” Gundy said of West Virginia head coach Neal Brown.

“The quarterback runs way better than what people think he does. He’s not a burner. Like, you worry about the guy we played last week just taking off and blowing everybody’s doors off. This guy is not that but he’s more effective than you think and he runs better than you think. Then he doesn’t get caught a lot of times,” Gundy said. “He’s really effective.”

West Virginia is averaging 28.5 points per game, their second-highest average in Neal Brown’s tenure. It’s a balanced attack that’s led by Greene who has over 1,100 yards of offense, 11 total touchdowns, and only only one interception.

However, it’s the defense that has made the difference in Morgantown this fall. It’s one of their better units in Brown’s time as they’re a Top-50 unit that’s giving up less than 23 points. Their overall scheme is what Gundy noted when he was speaking about them.

“Then, defensively, they’re in an on-front. They play a walkaround guy,” said Gundy. “He walks around, does a lot of different things. They bring him quite a bit, they like to blitz him.”