Cowboys Lead Big 12 in Offense but Rank Near Bottom in Red-Zone Touchdowns

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STILLWATER – After Saturday’s loss made the Cowboys’ warts a little more noticeable, it seems like everyone is honed in on the Cowboys’ starts and their short-yardage offense.

Those two issues might just be one issue — they were Saturday, at least.

Oklahoma State had little trouble moving down the field in the Cowboys’ 35-32 loss to Houston, but the struggles came when they got in tight to the goal-line.

The Cowboys went 43 yards in seven plays on their opening drive, ultimately having to settle for a 23-yard field goal. OSU’s next drive moved 75 yards down field, but the Cowboys were stopped on fourth down inside the 5-yard line.

So, OSU’s first two drives resulted in 118 yards of offense but just three points.

That slow start on the scoreboard meant the Cowboys scored just 3 points in the first half. Even with their outburst of 29 points and 361 yards of total offense in the second half, the Pokes weren’t able to catch up.

“I’m taking suggestions,” OSU coach Eric Morris joked Tuesday. “If y’all have my email, I’d love to hear them. I’m open to anything right now. Just going back and looking at this last one. I thought we had some opportunities on some good plays. We heavied everything up. We were probably a little bit too far out. I think we were on the 3- or 4-yard line and put a lot of big people on there. That was really the only play call that I really didn’t like.

“I think that maybe the fourth down there. The crazy part is we have opportunities on first down, second down, third down where I like it, and so it’s a combination of a lot of different things. I have to continue to find the best ways to put our guys in the best position. We got to execute and do it. We had a quarterback run play. We had numbers and everybody hatted it up, and they beat us at the point of attack. That’s an execution problem.”

We broke down all of the Cowboys’ inside-the-5 plays on Monday, so we’re not going to rehash some of the areas that lacked in execution.

Whether it’s a matter of just repping it until the Cowboys can execute it or having to change the gameplan down there, we’ll have to wait and see.

OSU is a shotgun/pistol team. On Tuesday, Morris was asked if he has been thinking about going under center in those tight quarters.

“Yeah, I think about everything,” Morris said. “So, include that in your thing too. You want to put some film in there, on my email, send it my way. We look at everything. But, yeah, I mean, obviously, it’s being studied and figuring out, like, right, there’s a problem, and our job is to figure out a solution for it. So, yeah, I think everything’s on the table.”

The Cowboys are in a weird spot in that they lead the Big 12 in total offense per game by a decent margin six games into their season. They’ve averaged 517.7 yards a game with West Virginia’s 497.1 yards per game ranking second.

But the Cowboys rank eighth in red zone scoring percentage, coming away with points on 85.3% of their red zone trips, but mathematics professors might point to the fact that seven is greater than three. That’s where the Cowboys have had struggles.

OSU’s 34 trips to the red zone tie for second in the Big 12, but the Cowboys have scored touchdowns on just 52.9% of those red zone trips, which ranks 14th in the league. OSU has scored 18 red-zone touchdowns, which ties for seventh — again, despite having the second-most trips.

“It’s one of those things like, as a coach, we preached it for a whole week last week, and it happened again, right?” Morris said. “We practiced it extra, and so we’ll continue to practice it. And I’ve had this before. Last year we were as good as anybody in the nation in that area. Three years ago, our first year at North Texas, we were almost similar to what we are now. We were not good at it. Obviously we’re not sitting here hiding behind it or saying that it’s not a problem. It’s a problem.”