Chalk Talk: How Cowboys Exploited WVU with One Route

There were many times when Oklahoma State moved the ball at will in their 37-20 win over West Virginia. And while it was partly due to their talent on offense, most of it was because of an outstanding game plan.

Some teams get caught grasping at straws when facing a unique defense like the 3-3-5, a defense that WVU has used for a long time. But the Cowboys went a with different route, both literally and figuratively (what an excellent segue, right?)

The Cowboys used a new wrinkle in their uptempo package — one that actually came from West Virginia. OSU frequently stacked receivers wide. On their run concepts, the receiver off the line ran a ‘now’ route while the other receiver blocked. But offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich frequently called a change-up, a now-post combination, that gave Rudolph a vertical run-pass option outlet.

This new wrinkle had the first receiver run the now route and the other run a hard-breaking post route to the inside. If there was a deep-half safety over the top, the quarterback handed the ball off; but if there was no safety, or in this case one high, the quarterback aborted the handoff and threw to his receiver in man coverage.

This play attacked the outside deep third, a weakness of the 3-3-5. With the Cowboys going so fast, combined with the how linebackers played so close to the line, Washington was frequently left one-on-one with seven yards of cushion. This led to easy completions like this.

The Cowboys attacked this void in the defense over and over, whether it be to the weak side.

To the strong side.

Or even in trips here.

And here.

They also attacked the defense with other inside-breaking routes, like the slant, in blitz situations. On many third downs, the Cowboys isolated Washington on the weak side and ran a play they don’t run much anymore.

This play is called stick, and it has a tagged slant-flat combination on the back side. Against man or man blitz, the weak-side receiver is isolated on his slant route. The Cowboys knew that WVU would bring pressure, and they used stick to convert on on a big third down on two separate instances.

The Cowboys used these concepts repeatedly, but they did a good job of disguising and altering them to make them look different every time. In the post-game press conference, head coach Mike Gundy talked about their simple game plan worked against the Mountaineers.

“I felt like the last few years that in a short period of time … when we’ve played them, we’ve tried to reinvent the wheel based on the 3-3-5,” Gundy told the Oklahoman. “And then we get into the game and then we’re not any good at anything.

“And we didn’t do that today. We ran the same plays that we’ve always run, we just tried to adjust them a little bit based on what they do. And I thought that was a smart move … We had good stuff today. We stayed within our box of what we do and it worked.”

The game plan was genius. It didn’t try and be too different, yet it perfectly found ways to attack the defense’s weaknesses. The biggest strength of the 3-3-5 is how it brings pressure. The formation is excellent in the way that it disguises pressure and forces turnovers.

But the Cowboys frequently used uptempo and it forced the Mountaineers into their base defense, which then gave OSU an opportunity to pick them apart. The players might have won this game, but the coaches had a huge hand in it.

How do you think the offense performed? Leave your opinions below in the comments!