Comparing Oklahoma State’s Defense to Ohio State’s Against the Sooners

On Monday, Mike Gundy pulled a notecard out of his pocked and proceeded to talk as if he had just invented the points per drive statistic.

“Yesterday I wanted to make a comparison and another team I think is a good football team and I have respect for,” said Gundy. “They’re a good team. They have a big time coach. They’ve won a lot of games. Everybody likes them.”

He was talking about Ohio State, and he made the point that just because Oklahoma State gave up 62 to OU, we have to look at these things from a points-per-possession standpoint. Yes, Mike. Preach!

“We play fast. (OU plays) fast. Ohio State doesn’t play fast. Oklahoma’s offense had 11 opportunities against Ohio State’s defense. They had 16 against our’s. If you would have taken the points per possession … and changed Ohio State’s to 16, OU would have scored 50 points in that game. We had to defend five more possessions because of the way we play.”

OK, let’s take a look at the numbers.

First of all, Gundy got the possessions wrong. He said Oklahoma State defended 16 drives, but the final drive was a zero-play drive. There was nothing to defend. I’m going to include the end-of-half drive in the second quarter even though OU packed it in and didn’t try.

But still, the defensive performances weren’t close. Ohio State would have given up 42 in 15 drives and 45 in 16. It would have taken 18 drives for OU to reach 50 in that game.

Gundy went into an entertaining monologue about A.J. Hinch and Moneyball, but I thought his point here was a little unfair. In general, I agree with him. It’s the dumbest thing in the world to not look at points per possession and just look at overall points scored per game, but it didn’t really add up in this instance.

Still, Gundy was undeterred by the 62 given up to the Sooners. He said offensively they put pressure on their defense to defend so many possessions. He wants people to, when they change the channel and see the Cowboys playing, to leave it on that channel.

“Here’s our mentality: We’re gunslingers, we’re not scared, we’re going to throw it deep, we’re going to play fast,” said Gundy. “Slowly but surely, we’re building a defense that can play with our team. It’s going to get better and better and better and better. We’re not going to change who we are.”

Gundy also insisted that the game plan and preparation for OU was sound defensively.

“We weren’t out of place (on defense),” said Gundy. “Had guys there, and they didn’t make the play.”