‘Respect Everyone, Fear No One’: Cowboys Failed to Respect Tulsa, Oregon Awaits

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The Cowboys had won the offseason, but that didn’t matter on a hot September Saturday in Tulsa.

Oklahoma State lost the first game of the Eric Morris Era 24-10 after months of Cowboy fans imaging their new offense setting the world ablaze. A few more days removed from Saturday’s disappointing result, Morris met with Dave Hunziker on OSU’s Inside Oklahoma State Athletics.

“It’s been a humbling experience for I think the whole entire department, and hopefully they felt that,” Morris said. “So, we’ve been super transparent with our players this week. I’ve been transparent with our coaches this week. Obviously, that was not a performance that we’re proud of by any stretch of the imagination, but now we need to see the steps of us getting better week by week.”

Enter No. 6 Oregon.

The Cowboys’ bounce-back opportunity comes against a team that seemingly has few weaknesses and brings with it a defensive line that might be the best in the country after OSU struggled up front against the Golden Hurricane.

“One of our mottos has been respect everyone, fear no one,” Morris said. “And I don’t think that we respected Tulsa like we should’ve. Hats off to them. They came out, and they executed better than us. So we’ll see how far along — I think our practice have been super spirited this week, which I’m proud of the guys. We’ve challenged them in a lot of different ways. So, excited to get back out there and get this taste out of our mouth.”

Much of Morris’ chat with Hunziker had to do with leadership. Before the season had started, Morris had noted multiple times that it’s easy to lead when things are going well.

In a team made up of 90+ newcomers, it sounds as if Morris is still seeking a higher level of leadership.

“The teams that are really, really special are led (from) within, and the accountability is at such a high level,” Morris said. “We’re not there yet.

“I think two, there’s this moment as you’re trying to establish things is we have all these people that we see in this sport as alphas as we got through practice, and then sometimes that alpha doesn’t produce that on tape and all of a sudden he’s looked at a different way by his peers and teammates. So, that’s always an interesting psychological thing in my opinion when all of a sudden, you had this big, bad, tough kid and the tape doesn’t show that when you come in the meeting room the first time. And you have to reset and encourage. There’s a part of telling these kids the truth and break them down, and you gotta build them back up with encouragement.”

When running down the list of things that need to be different in Game 2 than they were in Game 1, Morris noted the Cowboys need to play fast, not just physically but mentally. He said OSU needs to stack routine plays, something he felt the Cowboys didn’t do a good job of outside of the first drive against Tulsa. And he said they need to be better situationally — third downs (5-for-16), fourth downs (2-for-6) and in the red zone (2-for-4). Lastly, Morris noted the need to grab some momentum.

“And then, like, we gotta grab some momentum at some point during this game,” Morris said. “… We gotta create some excitement in that stadium by what we do on the field, right. And that’s creating some of those moments, some of those plays in key situations to give these fans something to cheer about.”