Oklahoma State’s Rush Defense Is Historically Bad

STILLWATER — Yards per carry has been a hot topic in reference to Oklahoma State all season — and not in a good way.

After Oklahoma State’s 42-21 loss to Arizona State on Saturday night, the Cowboys are rushing for 3.7 yards a carry in a season. That’s not great considering the Cowboys returned Doak Walker-winning running back Ollie Gordon and an experienced offensive line. I’s the fifth-worst in a season in the Mike Gundy era. But what’s worse is the Cowboys are allowing opposing teams to run for 5.9 yards a carry — a mark so bad its woefulness goes past the Gundy era.

Since OSU started recording the stat in 1940, this is the worst an OSU defense has been in yards per carry. There are only two other instances of OSU giving up more than 5.0 yards a carry in a season — 1988 (5.1) and 1996 (5.33). OSU finished 10-2 in that 1988 season thanks to the greatest rushing performance in college football history on the other side of the ball (shoutout Barry Sanders). OSU finished 5-6 in 1996 under Bob Simmons.

“Well, we’re rushing for 3-point-something a carry and we’ve given up 5.7 a carry, I think, something like that,” said Gundy on Saturday of his team’s biggest season-long issue. “That’s an issue. We got to do a better job of fitting the run, and we got to find ways to rush the ball better.”

The Cowboys are giving up 248.1 rushing yards a game — another Gundy-era high. This is just the second time a Gundy-led team has given up more than 200 yards a game on the ground, with the other instance being 2005, Gundy’s first season, when OSU allowed 205.5 rushing yards a game.

Here are the OSU teams that have given up more rushing yards a game than this 2024 squad:

1962 — 261.8/4-6 record
1963 — 253/1-8 record
1968 — 256/3-7 record
1970 — 260.73/4-7 record
1971 — 256.2/4-6-1 record
1977 — 264.9/4-7 record

That doesn’t read well for the Cowboys going on a run these next three games and extending their bowl streak.

Lastly, let’s project this forward. Thus far this season, teams have ran for 2,233 yards on the Cowboys. For reference, OSU gave up just 1,227 rushing yards in its vaunted 2021 season. If the Cowboys gave up their average for the remaining three games, they’d finish the year having given up about 2,977 yards on the year. That would be the most in program history. The only time OSU has given up more than 2,900 rushing yards in a year came in that 1977 season. Luckily for that OSU team, the Cowboys played just 11 games back then. The most amount of rushing yards an OSU team has given up under Gundy came in 2016 when OSU gave up 2,515 yards.

Injuries certainly haven’t helped this OSU team. The Cowboys have been without edge rusher Collin Oliver since the Arkansas game and without linebacker Nick Martin since the Kansas State contest. It probably wouldn’t be this bad if the Cowboys had those two guys for the whole season, but it was already trending to not be great. OSU gave up 232 rush yards to Arkansas, 249 to Utah and 300 to Kansas State.