10 more predictions on the OSU season

Photo Attribution: USATSI

Part I here.

1. Des Roland will top 700 yards — The most an RB2 has ever had in the Gundy era is Kendall Hunter’s 696 in 2007. Dantrelle Savage had 1,272 that season. No RB2 has ever reached the 700-yard plateau.[1. Zac had 847 also in 2007 which means OSU nearly had three 700-yard rushers that year!]

2. OSU will get inside the 20-seconds per snap mark — The formula here is total time/total plays so it’s not a true 20 seconds between snaps (it’s actually a lot less) but that’s the easiest measurement we have to go by. I wrote about it a little bit here.

3. The star of the freshman class will weigh 175 lbs. — It will not be Marcell Ateman or Ra’shaad Samples or Tre Flowers but, in fact, Ben Grogan.

This is why:

4. Josh Stewart will have six games with 10+ catches — He had five last year. Blackmon had six in each of his Biletnikoff campaigns. I’m still pretty bitter about Stewart not getting an All-Big 12 nod over Kenny Stills when Stills only had one conference game in which he cracked 100 yards (103 against OSU). Stewart had four of them.

5. OSU will score 70 TDs for the fourth straight season — There have been 26 team seasons in the last three years (out of a possible 364) in which 70 TDs have been scored. Oregon and Oklahoma State own six of them (three each) and are the only two that have done it three straight years. Both will make it four.[1. Side note here: Houston scored 93 TDs in 2011 — that same year OSU had 81 with, you know, Justin Blackmon and Brandon Weeden. Can you imagine 93?!]

6. Additionally, OSU will gain over 7,000 yards for the third straight season — There have been 19 such team seasons since 2000 (out of a possible 1,549) and OSU has two of them in the last two years.[1. For comedy’s sake Baylor had 2,440 total yards in 2000, the worst output from 2000-2012.] Only Houston (2008-2009) and Tulsa (2007-2008) have had such a stretch.

Again, total yards to determine how good your team is is kind of a useless stat on its own but it’s still fun to look at.

7. The streak of never having an outright QB TD king will continue — When I was looking up player props for the Josh Stewart/Clint Chelf gambling aficionados I ran into a stat that confused me: OSU has never had an outright Big 12 leader in TDs thrown. Griffin and Weeden tied with 37 in 2011 and that’s as close as OSU has come. Don’t think it changes this year, especially with the two-QB thing.

8. Mike Gundy will win more games than Dana Holgorsen and Todd Monken combined — Pretty proud of this one. Just gonna leave it right here and move on.

9. OSU won’t score under 35 all year — It happened four times last season: Kansas (!), Iowa State, Kansas State, and Baylor but all were close to the 35-point mark except (yeah, I have no idea either) Kansas. It happened twice in 2011: 30 against A&M and 31 against Iowa State. 35 seems to be kind of the benchmark — that KU game was such a ridiculous outlier I don’t even know what to think about it. Maybe Charlie Weis greased the field during the rain delay with some leftovers from Pizza Hut.

10. Mike Gundy will tuck a long-sleeve jacket into his pants in 3+ games — Like I won’t be keeping track of this…