Film Look: Three Takeaways From the OSU Offense in Corvallis

The Cowboys were able to rack up 555 total yards in Friday night’s 16-point victory over the Oregon State Beavers. Oklahoma State found success on the ground and through the air, scoring seven touchdowns on the day. Below I’ll go over my three key takeaways from the Pokes on the offensive side of the ball.

1. Sean Gleeson’s Imprint on the Offense

The Cowboys didn’t fully open up their playbook on Friday night, but it was pretty cool to see Sean Gleeson make his mark on the offense early and often. We’ve heard from Gundy that Gleeson was brought in to run the Oklahoma State offense, and not implement his Princeton scheme in Stillwater. However, we saw Gleeson’s offensive style show up throughout the game against Oregon State.

First, we saw it with this play action roll out early in the first quarter. Cowboy quarterback Spencer Sanders fakes the handoff to running back Chuba Hubbard and rolls out to his right. Cowboy Back Logan Carter is lined up in the H-back spot to left side of the formation and comes across the line of scrimmage to run a shallow route to the flat. The OSU wide receivers, along with Cowboy Backs Jelani Woods and Carter, run a Flood concept to the wide side of the field.

Below we see something very similar from Gleeson’s Princeton offense of years past.

Now, let’s look at a run play that Gleeson brought with him from Princeton… the Buck Sweep. This play consists of both the back-side and play-side guard pulling around the outside to attack the edge of the defense.  This first clip shows Princeton running this play with a trips look to one side and a “nub” tight end on the other.

Next we see the Pokes run it against the Beavers on Friday night.

The Buck Sweep is something we didn’t really see from OSU under Yurcich. By running this, teams are looking to exploit a numbers advantage on the perimeter and give the ball carrier an outside running lane. I really like that Gleeson is continuing the Buck Sweep in Stillwater because if you can get Chuba out in space with a numbers advantage… there’s a good chance you wind up with six points.

2. Zone Read

Since we were already talking Buck Sweep, let’s keep it on the ground with Gleeson’s zone read. In the video below, we see the Cowboys in 11 personnel (one tight end/Cowboy Back and one running back). Hubbard and Woods are lined up in a split backfield look with Sanders in the shotgun, Woods is slightly offset. Sanders takes the snap and reads the defense, as Woods crosses to the top of the screen in front of the Hubbard/Sanders mesh point. The young quarterback sees the defensive end crash down on Hubbard, pulls the ball back and takes off around the edge.

Where we see Gleeson add in his wrinkle is with the use of Woods. The big Cowboy Back is “arc” blocking for Sanders by looping around the defensive end and sealing the edge for his quarterback. This is key against defenses utilizing the “scrape exchange” technique to stop the zone read, an example of the “scrape exchange” is shown in the Bleacher Report image below.

3. Screen with Cowboy Back Lead Blocking

Finally, I wanted to discuss a particular wide receiver screen concept that Gleeson used a few times during the game. The play starts off with Woods at H-back to Sanders’ left. He then motions across the line of scrimmage and sprints out to the Twins receiver side right before the snap. This allows him to get out in front as a lead blocker on the wide receiver screen to Tylan Wallace. With solid blocks from both Dillon Stoner and Woods, Wallace is spring for a big gain.

The next time Oklahoma State ran this play, Carter was in Woods’ spot as the lead blocker, and it ended in a score for the Cowboys.

I realize the Pokes were facing off against a really bad Oregon State defense, but I really liked what I saw from Gleeson and this Oklahoma State offense. I’m really excited to continue seeing more and more of his playbook as the season progresses.