Brandon Rawls Powers OSU Defense, Exceeds Expectations in Jump from D-II

STILLWATER — The largest crowd Brandon Rawls played in front of last season at D-II Saginaw Valley State was 8,586 people. 

When the offer from Oklahoma State came, the senior linebacker jumped at the chance to be a Cowboy, confident he could leave his mark in Stillwater. Still, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous to make a good impression when spring practice started.

“The spring was like my coming-out party,” Rawls said. “The spring was for me to show that I could play with these guys and fly around. So the first day of spring with pads (I) was definitely a little nervous. 

“But I feel like the coaches instilled confidence in me. They told me, like, ‘From the film we’ve seen, you can play here.’”

It’s hard to argue that. After his first two games as a Cowboy, Rawls ranks second on the team in tackles with 19, putting him 11 ahead of third place. He also earned the team’s third-highest defensive rating on Pro Football Focus (PFF) among Cowboys to play at least five snaps.

Despite those impressive numbers, his head coach still sees a player adjusting to the step up in competition.

“There’s an adjustment you go through in my opinion,” Mike Gundy said. “You know, when you move from junior high or middle school football to high school football, it’s a big deal. You know, you’re looking around (at the bigger crowds) and all that. Then you, if you’re fortunate enough to go to the next level, you’re doing the same thing. And then I’m sure if you go to the next level, it’s the same thing. So it’s all a process for ‘em.”

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Becoming a Cowboy

Rawls said he didn’t know what to expect when he entered his name in the transfer portal. He felt he had something to give, but was unsure who would come calling.

He certainly didn’t expect one of his first offers to come from Oklahoma State.

“He was pretty shocked that they had reached out,” his mother, Brandi Rawls, said. “And he was very excited, just to know that, you know, a school that caliber was looking at him.”

Rawls quickly narrowed things down to OSU, Mississippi State and Arkansas State. His new coaches, including OSU defensive coordinator Todd Grantham, put the Cowboys over the top, and his visit to Stillwater sealed the deal.

“It was a family atmosphere, you know, an opportunity to win,” Brandon Rawls said. “I could come here, they said I could play. So that was first off. And then when I came here, everybody in Stillwater was just so nice, you know. I’ve never been somewhere where everybody was nice like this.”

The zip code wasn’t the only adjustment the linebacker had to make. Oklahoma State lines him up firmly inside the box most of the time. In the past, he played more of an edge role.

“So most of my plays were mostly downhill, outside-in tackles,” Brandon Rawls said. “Coming here, I’m playing, now I’m inside the box, and they’re more inside-out tackles. So, you know, just getting over blocks, make sure I stay, keep myself alive in the wash, I should say. And then I guess you would say the passing game. The passing concepts might be a little more confusing in the back end, but it’s really football at the end of the day.”

He clarified that “staying alive in the wash” mostly required a mindset change with how he approached football. Rawls can’t afford to be quite as aggressive working his downfield or he won’t be there to make the tackles OSU needs him to make. 

It has certainly paid off for the Cowboys this season. Rawls leads the team with 11 “stops” defined by PFF as tackles that constitute a “failure” for the offense. Only 50 players in the nation have more stops than Rawls, and 48 of those guys have played three or even four games at this point, while Rawls has only two.

Meanwhile, his closest teammate has five stops this season, and Rawls is credited with 23% of OSU’s total stops.

That speaks to perhaps one of the few areas Rawls managed to even surprise himself.

“I thought (offensive) linemen would be a little bigger, I might have a little trouble, you know, having to initiate blocks and engage,” Rawls said. “Haven’t had no problem doing that.”

For all his success so far, the linebacker has yet to meet his own expectations.

“I would say it (my standards) comes from my parents,” Rawls said. “You know, we strive for excellence. If you’re going to do anything, I find my favorite scripture is one (Ecclesiastes 9:10), if you’re going to do anything with your hands, do it with all your might. So I’m not going to short-change myself on anything. You know, if I’m going to do football, I’m going to go 100%. I’m going to be the hardest on myself that I can be.”

To those who know Brandon well, it’s hardly a surprise. During the first practice of his junior year of high school, he unknowingly broke his hand at the start. Not only did he finish the practice, he only casually mentioned the discomfort to his mother later that day, downplaying the pain at the time.

“I look over at his hand, his hand is like the size of five hands. … I rushed him to an emergency and they cast him up,” Brandi Rawls said. “And he’s like, ‘Mom, I gotta play. It’s my junior year.’ He played the whole year with a club on, and he had, like, 100 tackles. It was ridiculous. He refused to let that stop him, and that’s just what he’s always done. Like, it doesn’t matter what it is, he’s just figured out a way to make it work.”

Brandon said he took the mistakes he made during early OSU practices so hard that his position coach, Kap Dede, actually had to encourage him to go easier on himself while he learned the new defense.

“When I came in, I was super hard on myself,” Rawls said. “Any mistake, I would like, beat myself up over. But he’s kind of taught me, like, take a breath.”

Where He Belongs

When asked about leadership among the Cowboys following the loss to Oregon, Gundy praised the team’s response. One of the first names he mentioned was Rawls.

The linebacker said he was proud of how his teammates refused to crumble in the minutes that followed that defeat and mentioned that it “could be a propelling force for the rest of our season.”

“It’s extremely critical (to respond on the field),” Rawls said ahead of Friday’s game against Tulsa. “What we put on film two weeks ago wasn’t what we want to put on film. Our defense isn’t like that. Our defense is a lot better than that. We want to put a dominant performance out this week and show the Big 12 that we’re here to stay.”

If history is any indication, Rawls will make his presence felt in his first and last game against in-state Tulsa. No one will cheer harder for him than his grandmother, Gwen Henderson, who just might be wearing head-to-toe OSU gear while she watches him play on an ESPN broadcast watched by a lot more than 8,500 people.

His mother will be watching too, but she won’t have to look up his exact stats because so many friends and family members send her screenshots of her son’s stat line the second each game ends.

As crazy as it all sounds, Brandi might be one of the only people less surprised by her son’s journey than he is himself.

“He just went there,” she said. “And it seemed like he was supposed to be there the whole time. … From day one, I think he had his mind made up that he was there to go there to make an impact on the team, but also to prove to the world that he deserved to be there. So I think it was that mindset that helped him go there and just jump right in.”