The Rundown: Mike Gundy Talks Spencer Sanders and O-Line Kool-Aid

STILLWATER — A lot more is known about Mike Gundy’s football team now that what was last week.

At his pre-McNeese media luncheon Monday, Gundy fielded plenty of questions regarding his newly named starting quarterback, his offensive line that pushed the Beavers around and his running back who leads the nation in rushing. Here is what Gundy said at his Monday presser:

• The Oregon State tape was what he thought it would be. Offensively, the team blocked and ran the ball well. Spencer Sanders handled the offense well.

• OSU tackled well for how early it is in the season.

• Gundy said his defense couldn’t get off the field on third down (Oregon State was 13-for-20 on third down). He said they didn’t do a good enough job of pressuring the quarterback. He said most of those times the secondary is in man coverage, and if the quarterback gets 2.8 seconds or more, it usually doesn’t work for the defense.

• Malcolm Rodriguez played well in his first game at linebacker. Gundy said he processes information quickly, and he is a good tackler.

• Gundy hasn’t had a conversation with Spencer Sanders about jumping over guys or taking contact. “He’s gotta play. There were three occasions where he initiated contact that he didn’t need, in my opinion. He’s played that way throughout his career. To a certain extent, you just gotta let him play.”

• On offensive-line play: “It’s early in all phases. Everybody has to be careful about being on the Kool-Aid early, but it was the highest grade that we ever had as an offensive line group since I’ve been the head coach.”

• Gundy reiterated that Sanders played and handled the offense well. Gundy said he didn’t feel like Sanders got flustered.

• Gundy said the plan was to use Brown some, too, but Sanders’ performance kept him in.

• The early high volume of run plays was more because of the safeties trying to take away Tylan Wallace as opposed to letting Sanders settle in.

• The freshmen played well. Gundy said Trace Ford and Jayden Jernigan did moreso because of all the snaps they got.

• “Trace is really fast and can cover a lot of ground once he sees what’s going on. He seems like he processes information really quick.”

• On Ford moving around on defense: “He moves around like Brailford does. We feel like he’s athletic enough to move around and do some things we did with Jordan. He’s not near the player Jordan was at this point, but his athleticism resembles his ability. He’s faster. Jordan’s not as fast as Trace is. But he’s certainly not as experienced and strong as Jordan was last year.”

• Gundy said the team got better play than he expected from “the 6-6 crew” (Jordan McCray, C.J. Moore and Patrick McKaufman).

• Calvin Bundage had a “setback” about 10 days ago. The decision was made to hold him out. Gundy said he gets updates Tuesday. He said Bundage might be held out again this week. “He’s got a back issue, and they’re hard to determine. Sometimes guys come back quick, sometimes they don’t.”

• Gundy said Bundage’s back injury doesn’t require surgery. It’s more on pain tolerance.

• Israel Antwine “should be” available this week. He said he’d know in a couple of days. “We have him sitting on G, waiting on O.”

• On if he is comfortable with giving Chuba Hubbard the ball 26 times a game: “Sean (Gleeson) asked me the same thing on the bus. I don’t know. It looked pretty good to me. That’s a lot of carries. You’re looking at potentially 300 carries on a year like that. I don’t know if that’s real smart, but we have to ride it right now depending on how we flow as an offense. If they’re gonna play over the top of (Wallace), the guy is gonna get a lot of carries. LD (Brown) and Micah (Cooper) need to get in there and get a part of it. … I guess if you’re asking could it happen again? Sure, he could get 25 carries this week.”

• Dezmon Jackson was held out against Oregon State despite being cleared, but he is practicing this week after a wrist injury hampered his fall camp.

• Walk-on running back Micah Cooper “has been awesome.” Gundy said his youngest son, Gage, and his friends would work out at OSU’s weight room, and since December Gage kept telling him about this one guy being in there every day alone working out. Gage finally figured out that it was Cooper recently. Gage told Gundy, and Gundy said, “You know, that’s interesting because he’s by far the most improved player that we have.”

• Jahmyl Jeter hurt his ankle a couple of weeks ago. Gundy said he practiced a little bit last week.

• Gundy said he thinks there were three times the offensive line turned someone loose, twice on one play. He said he knew their performance was “pretty good” because there weren’t a lot of defenders running free.

• “My early years here, once we got past the first year we kinda figured out what we were doing, in 06, 07, 08, 09, people didn’t really want to play us based on our physicality up front and our ability to hit you in the mouth and rush the football. We weren’t as, maybe flamboyant as we were in the last six or eight years, but we, I guess maybe me more than anybody, wants to get back to that, the way that we built this program in the early days.”

• There is a combination of things that make this offensive line good, experience being a big one.

• On the depth of the Big 12: “The only thing I would say is you go to the bowl games. That’s the only chance for us to match up head-to-head. Everybody’s going to have a personality and an opinion all across the country, but in this conference, we’ve fared pretty well in bowl games against people from other leagues. If you’re gonna compete against teams in this league, in most cases, you better score points. We’re gonna score points. It’s fun to watch, and I think from top to bottom, we’re gonna be as competitive as anybody else in the country.”

• One of the drink coolers in the press box let out some rattling noise, and Gundy said: “We’ve got a bearing problem over there. I changed one about a month ago at the house. If I have to do it again, I guess I can.”

• McNeese quarterback Cody Orgeron is LSU coach Ed Orgeron’s son. Here’s Gundy on having football player kids of his own: “The difficult part is he doesn’t get to see him play. You can watch tape and replays and all that, but it’s not the same.”

• Last Wednesday night the team had its travel meeting, and 28 of the 72 players that made the trip had never traveled before. Gundy said most years it’s about 10 or 12 on the first trip.

• Gundy said “supposedly” two Oregon State coaches got on the elevator that got stuck because they missed the Oregon State one. “I told (Cowboy backs coach Jason) McEndoo, I said, ‘Were any of their guys as big as you?’ He said no, and I said, ‘Then you should’ve picked them up and put them out of the elevator and said ‘It’s not my fault you missed your elevator. We’re not gonna overweight this car on the way up.””

• Gundy gave his first fart noise of the year when talking about a late Oregon State touchdown where two Beaver wide receivers crossed. He said the defenders should’ve switched. Fart noise was light, definitely not in midseason form.

• On run/pass balance, Gundy said he doesn’t have any problem rushing for 250 yards and throwing for 250 yards. He said the 250-yard mark is a good mark for OSU running the ball, but it depends on what the defense gives them.

• Gundy said he couldn’t tell Sanders was nervous because he isn’t around him pregame. He said the last time he saw him was at the hotel.

• Gundy didn’t know what to expect from Sanders. He said he was pleased with how he played, but he wasn’t surprised.