Daily Bullets (Sept. 28): Most Viewed of the Week, Loads of Texas Talk

Beat the Cats – also, a very happy 7th anniversary to Mrs. Bullets. You can’t fill Boone Pickens Stadium with all of my gratitude for how you choose to love me every day. 

Bullets Rundown

• Gundy shoots down a goober journalist
• Wrapping up the Texas game
• PFB predictions from UT game – particularly those that went well

OSU Bullets

• Most Viewed of the Week (No. 1) Gundy Rips Journalist for Tacky Question about Mr. Pickens’ Will

This was a tough line for the journalist to walk – Gundy’s desire to yak it up about his haircut but in an inappropriate context. The question is the equivalent of asking a coworker publicly about another peer jokingly leaving anything in their will: it’s just off-base to ask about.

As much as I don’t agree with some of Gundy’s media policies at times, I think this was a reasonable response and I’m glad he took the line he did.

• Most Viewed of the Week (No. 2) Ten Thoughts from the Texas Game

After time to chew on this game (plus listening to some excellent x’s and o’s chatter), Texas had an incredible defensive gameplan that really neutralized OSU’s run game. As any good gameplan does, it was schemed to take away what OSU does well (outside zone plays with Chuba Hubbard, anything to Tylan Wallace) and force them into figuring out other options.

I think the biggest limitation at this point is Spencer Sanders’ comfort level – understanding what the defense is giving him and being exposed to different nuances of defense. The bright side is as Porter pointed out on Thought No. 2: good heavens, can Sanders go. And that will cover up a lot of arm limitations.

• Most Viewed of the Week (No. 3) PFB Predictions for the Texas Game

My favorite was Cox’s guess of 38-35 Pokes. If recovers the onside and goes in for the score, they likely win 37-36 and Lord have mercy that would have been a near-perfect prediction.

Another great guess was when predicting who would have more passing yards between Sanders and Sam Ehlinger, Boone took Sanders noting how Texas would want OSU to try and push the ball downfield taking away Hubbard’s best options. He was exactly right in Texas’ strategy and it begged OSU to take shots downfield to anybody whose name doesn’t rhyme with Schmylan Flawless.

• Most Viewed of the Week (No. 4) Rece Davis Calls Mike Gundy the Landlord of Austin

This should have been under first tell that the game wouldn’t have gone as we hoped, right? The fact that Texas was favored was a good sign, it’s never ideal for OSU to go in with a big head.

But it was fun for once to have OSU experiencing a little brand equity.

• Most Viewed of the Week (No. 5) ESPN+ Talk – No Reason to be Upset with OSU

This was a great, informative look at the macro-level trend behind why OSU will be playing a conference game on what’s not likely to be a widely-held viewing option.

The negative impact (on sports watching) with the unbundling process is being felt but the point about how this wasn’t necessarily the impact of signing over OSU’s third-tier rights to ESPN+ but simply the network tapping into the capability to show the game on ESPN+ as a result of their other rights being signed over to ESPN.

Does that make sense? It wasn’t the third-tier rights deal (giving one football game a year) but it’s as if ESPN chose to put a game that was previously able to be put on ESPN, ESPN2 or ABC onto ESPN+. It’s within their right to put what they want from those games on whichever outlet they’d like, and they (ESPN) is doing so in a less than ideal way.

• Boynton had me ready to run through a wall – getting excited to watch this team.

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Non-OSU Bullets

• This Sam Presti interview from earlier in the week starkly rebuffed some of Kevin Durant’s comments to WSJ – glad to see but KD still confounds me

• Loved how this faith-based read pulled out the tension between productivity (I love to read articles like this) and resting