Film Look: OSU’s First Half Rushing Success Paved the Way for a Big Win

Coming out of Oklahoma State’s 38-35 homecoming victory over the Texas Longhorns, there’s been a lot of talk about the play of Taylor Cornelius and Tylan Wallace. This discussion is rightfully deserved as TC silenced his doubters with a very impressive performance, and Wallace again showed he has the talent to finish his career among the all-time Cowboy receiver greats.

However, for my offensive takeaway this week, I wanted to focus on the first half play of the OSU running backs and the offensive line. The Pokes were coming off of two poor rushing performances against Iowa State and K-State in which they combined to rush for only 3.6 yards per attempt. In addition, the Cowboys picked up just 146 yards on 51 carries (2.9 per attempt) a year ago in Austin. Even if you remove Mason Rudolph’s -14 yards, the Oklahoma State running backs still only had 3.6 yards per carry in their 13-10 win over the Longhorns.

Well, the Cowboys decided they were going to put a stop to their running woes in the first half of this past weekend’s game. Taking out the two sacks on Cornelius, the running back trio of Justice Hill, Chuba Hubbard and J.D. King, along with help from TC, rushed for 161 yards on 30 attempts, surpassing their full game yardage total from a year ago in only two quarters of play. This equates to 5.4 yards per carry, which is 2.5 more than their average from last season against UT.

These are pretty impressive numbers, so just how did they do it? Well, one of the primary ways was building off of a play the Cowboys used to score their lone touchdown, shown in the video below, against Texas in last year’s matchup… the “Stretch“.

The stretch play, or outsize zone, is designed to get the offensive line and backfield moving horizontally, forcing the defense to “stretch”, which in turn opens up running lanes. Additionally, if the offensive lineman can climb to the linebackers, or the second level of the defense, then this play will usually result in a big gain. In the clip above, you can see OSU left tackle Aaron Cochran is able to get to the second level easily with no defender in front of him, and with solid blocks from the receivers and Cowboy Back, King is able to find the end zone.

We saw the Cowboys run this play almost to perfection in the first half on Saturday, and they used a lot of two-back looks to keep the UT defense guessing. Below we see a split backfield look with Hill and Hubbard. The offensive line does a great job of engaging their initial blocks and then climbing to the second level of the defense. With how the Longhorn “Tite” front is set up, right tackle Shane Richards is able to release almost instantly to the linebacker and seal the edge. Wallace also does a great job of ensuring his man can’t make the play, and even though Chuba doesn’t really get his hands on anyone this time, I like the idea of using the other running back as a lead blocker around the outside.

Next, we see a similar look with the split backfield, but it’s Chuba and J.D. this time, with the speedy Canadian getting the carry and the powerful King leading the way through the alley. The OSU offensive lineman again have the ability to almost instantly release to the linebackers with the Longhorns in their Tite front.

In this last video, we see Hill and Hubbard in the backfield together again. The Pokes add an extra wrinkle this time with the backs crossing after the snap and Justice getting the ball to the right. Right guard Larry Williams does makes a great block on the pursuing linebacker which springs Hill for a nice gain. In addition, there’s some great blocking from the receiving unit.

The Cowboys saw some success with other running plays as well, but Texas was having a lot of trouble in the first half defending the outside zone, especially at the tempo OSU was playing with early on.

Oklahoma State had offensive lineman Shane Richards go down in the second quarter and Larry Williams came out of the game for a bit, and this slowed down their rushing attack, along with UT making some adjustments at halftime. However, as I discussed in my key to the game post from last week, the Cowboys were able to establish the run early and it opened up a lot of things for their offense on Saturday.