Film Look: Three Takeaways from the OSU Offense

The Cowboys were able to rack up 640 total yards of offense in Saturday’s 1-point loss in Norman. Oklahoma State found success on the ground and through the air, scoring seven touchdowns on the day. Below I will take a look at three positives I saw from the Pokes yesterday on this side of the ball.

1. Attacking Levels with the Passing Game

Last week I discussed how OSU could exploit the Sooners by attacking multiple levels of their secondary, and Taylor Cornelius and the Cowboy wide receivers did just that on Saturday. TC threw for 501 yards (!!), three touchdowns and no interceptions with a 64.2 percent completion percentage, which was over 4 percentage points higher than his season percentage coming into this game.

First, I’ll show how the Cowboys were able to take advantage early of OU’s man coverage. On the play below you see Justice Hill and Chuba Hubbard both run swing routes to the flats to give Cornelius underneath options. Dillon Stoner runs an out route taking safety Brendan Radley-Hiles with him and out of the play. The backside safety and corner are completely occupied by Tyron Johnson’s post route and Tylan Wallace has one-on-one coverage on the outside with no safety help over the top. He beats Sooner cornerback Tre Norwood and TC throws a beautiful ball for the big gain setting up first and goal for the Pokes.

Next, we see another big play to Wallace, this time it ends in points for the Cowboys. This play begins with a play-action fake to Hubbard causing some hesitation from the OU linebackers and defensive backs. The OU safety bites on inside receiver Landon Wolf’s curl route behind the linebackers causing him to take a step towards the line of scrimmage.

This puts him out of position and makes him unable to help Norwood over the top who is once again beat by Tylan Wallace as TC puts it on the money again for a Cowboy score.

In this next video, we see the OU safety to the boundary side run up to cover the quick throw out to Stoner on the bubble route. The backside safety is rolling over to cover the deep zone and with the boundary corner in off-coverage, the middle of the field is wide open for the slant route.

Cornelius doesn’t throw the best ball here, but Johnson is able to make the catch and the Oklahoma State offense moves the chains.

Finally, I wanted to show a play that OU has found success with in recent years, the “pop pass”. The pop pass is utilized to take advantage of the linebackers by putting them into a conflict. They are usually responsible for the short to intermediate throws in the middle of the field in zone coverage. The play fake to the running back causes them to step forward as the tight end, or Cowboy Back in this OSU offense, releases up the seam. The quarterback quickly pulls the ball back and fires it to his man up the seam before the linebackers can recover, and before the safety can come up and make a play. TC and Jelani Woods run it to perfection here for a solid gain.

The Cowboy offense was also able to find success on screens, curl and hitch routes, out routes and swing passes to the running backs. They stretched the defense both vertically and horizontally and caused a lot of confusion in the Oklahoma secondary, which allowed them to find success through the air. In addition, it opened up the running game in the second half as the Pokes rushed for 85 of their 139 total yards on the ground in the final two quarters.

2. Pass Protection

The Oklahoma State offensive line came into this weekend allowing 3.0 sacks per game, ranking them in a tie for 112th in the nation. However, on Saturday the Pokes only gave up two sacks, and only one can be tagged to the offensive line. Even without Arlington Hambright and Shane Richards, who missed this game due to injuries, the OSU linemen provided Cornelius with a clean pocket on a majority of his drop backs. The Sooners didn’t bring a ton of pressure on Saturday, but they were bringing at least four guys at TC on basically every snap.

We saw Corn get plenty of time on the big play to Tylan I showed above.

And, although this was an incompletion, the O-line again gave Cornelius plenty of time to survey the field and make the throw.

In addition, they had a solid day in terms of run blocking as the Cowboy running backs averaged 5.1 yards per carry. To see the offensive line have this kind of day while missing two key components is extremely impressive.

3. Chuba at Wide Receiver

By my count, Chuba Hubbard was split out at wide receiver on seven of Oklahoma State’s 86 total plays. This is by far the most we’ve seen Mike Yurcich do this in a single game this season. We saw the Cowboys use him on the slant route, as shown in the clip below. Hubbard doesn’t pick up the first down here on third and long, but he runs a great route and makes a nice catch on the play.

In the next clip, Hubbard is lined up as the inside receiver, as opposed to the outside in the video above. TC throws a bubble screen out to Hubbard and Wolf springs him with a nice block.

We also saw Hubbard being used as a decoy to open up the running game.

Getting Chuba involved as a wide out allows the Cowboys have him on the field and still have one of their other talented backs lined up with TC in the backfield. Even though he had the one drop late, Hubbard has shown he has good hands and is a capable route runner.