Maybe We Should Have Seen the 2017 Season Coming

Maybe we should have seen the 2017 season coming.

Before it began, there was no middle ground on expectations. It was Big 12 title or bust, with a playoff appearance a foregone conclusion after Sports Illustrated put OSU’s signal-caller on its preseason cover.

Oklahoma State in the playoff? The cover read. Yes, Oklahoma State in the playoff.

Three months and three losses later, it’s hard to believe OSU has not only been eliminated from playoff contention, but also from Big 12 championship contention. The Cowboys have lost all three games at home, with the last – a 45-40 stunner to K-State on Saturday – going down as one of the worst in the Mike Gundy era.

The fall from grace has been astounding.

So how did we get here? How did OSU, a preseason not-so-dark horse to make it to the playoff, underachieve at such an astonishing level? There were signs early on this season – tea leaves, you can call them – which maybe should have alerted us this season might at least have potential to wind up a disappointment.

One week after a baffling conference-opening loss to TCU, a nail-biter over Texas Tech in late September should have been the first indication. Despite the 41-34 escape job in Week 2 of league play over Kliff Kingsbury’s squad, which led to the return of the Cardiac Cowboys mantra, OSU struggled to stay disciplined and special teams gaffes mucked up the effort. It was penalized against Tech eight times and got double-boinkers from Matt Ammendola in the field goal game.

I wrote then that the game, albeit a win for the Pokes, induced red flags, which we all decided to collectively eschew after OSU throttled Baylor and survived whatever happened against Texas in the weeks that followed.

But those red flags were real. OSU has been undisciplined, averaging 5.6 penalties per game in conference play. And those special teams woes? Those turned out to be real, too. The Cowboys special teams unit’s rank second to last in efficiency among the 130 FBS teams, according to ESPN.

Second to last!

On the bright side, it’s better than Ball State. On the not-so-bright side, however, every other team in college football has been more efficient in an area Gundy-coached OSU teams typically can hang their hat on. And that lost them at least one game (Kansas State).

We also ignored the fact that OSU didn’t run the ball very well against South Alabama and Pittsburgh. They ran it for just 3.7 yards per carry in those games, and that’s something that would bite them (when compounded with injuries) against TCU and Texas.

We had distractions along the way, of course. Mike Gundy took his shirt off at homecoming. He offered to buy beer for members of the media after beating Texas in Austin. He marketed his mullet on national TV at every opportunity.

But the red flags were always there.

What’s worse is that the red flags early in the season turned out to be only a sliver of the troubles OSU has faced in November. The defense, which entered November coming off strong performances against Baylor, Texas and West Virginia, absolutely imploded when it mattered most.

In November, the OSU defense is surrendering 50 points per game. It let Baker hang 62 and forced Mason Rudolph to try and play hero ball late against the Sooners and Kansas State. It let Iowa State’s fourth string QB push them to the brink in Ames. And it made Skylar Thompson and Byron Pringle look like Brandon Weeden and Justin Blackmon.

And on offense, the high-flying attack Mike Gundy himself believed couldn’t be stopped, faltered in the biggest games of the season. Against TCU, it managed score just 31 and couldn’t scheme around a cover-two defense from the Frogs (3.7 YPC in the two games before turned into 3.3). Against Texas, Justice Hill ran into walls more times than a Lexus test dummy (2.9 YPC). And against K-State and OU, it simply couldn’t keep pace, in part because the defense couldn’t get stops. It wasn’t as consistent as we expected coming in, even though it had a handful of elite performances (Pitt, Baylor and Iowa State among them).

That’s not even mentioning the turnover epidemic OSU is experiencing on offense. As Mark Cooper of the Tulsa World noted, the Cowboy offense has 21 turnovers through 11 games, a sharp uptick from 14 in 13 games last season.

When we looked at the season before it began, there was no if, ands or buts – there was only expectation. OSU was going to compete for a championship, whether it be nationally or for the conference, or both. But there was no scenario in which we expected less. Not like this, anyway.

Yet here we are with one final regular season game left, and the ceiling for the season is 10 wins. OSU can get its ninth win of the regular season on Saturday, against a hapless Kansas team. But it’s hard to imagine that, even on senior day, anything about this season can be reversed. Even against the worst team in the conference, the Cowboys have little to play for in comparison to the lofty expectations thrust upon them in August.

Perhaps 2017 was a mirage we had all built in our heads of what we wished it could be. Perhaps we all, myself included, bought into the national media’s hype of this team. Or, perhaps, we should have paid more attention to the red flags along the way and seen the end of the 2017 season coming from miles away.