Comparing the Oklahoma State and Oklahoma Offenses Through 5 Games

OU and Oklahoma State currently employ (probably) the two best offenses in the Big 12 and maybe even two of the top three or five in the country. Oklahoma State is No. 2 in points per game scored nationally at 46.8 (tied with Texas Tech), and Oklahoma is No. 6 at 44.6.

Those numbers shouldn’t mean much to you, though, if you’ve been paying attention to this blog at all over the past few years. The real numbers are found in points per drive. How efficient were you with the football when you had the football? Because these two teams (and offense) get brought up in the same breath so often, I thought it would be fun to take a look at their respective numbers five games into the season.

Note: This does not include 0-play drives like INTs and kickoff returns.

That is … astounding. They have almost exactly the same numbers having played almost exactly the same schedule (Sagarin says Oklahoma State’s slate has been tougher) and both rank in the top 10 in yards per play and first downs. These offenses are more or less the same statistically.

After my Mike Yurcich post last week went up in flames I started thinking over the weekend why Lincoln Riley and Yurcich put up pretty much the same numbers, and one is considered the Mozart of football in the Midwest and the other little more than a whipping boy for fans who wear orange and black.

I’m not sure why that is other than it’s been ingrained into our minds that Yurcich is bad and Riley is good. The reality is that they’re both pretty good and that these offenses look poised once again play for a Big 12 crown. Defense and special teams are a different story, though, as we’ll look at later on this week.

Also, I volunteer to purposely inflate somebody’s numbers next time we look at this if one of these offensive coordinators will implement this play in the coming weeks.

Best two point play ever. pic.twitter.com/eA4AqIeA4r

— Dustin Fox (@DustinFox37) October 10, 2017