Five Things We Learned from OSU’s Bedlam Loss

Oklahoma State suffered another of a long line of gut-wrenching losses to its cross-state rival Oklahoma on Saturday, 62-52.

It was a back-and-forth grind all game and knotted at 38-all at halftime (!), but the Sooners’ offense, fueled by big plays, sunk the Pokes and, potentially, their Big 12 title hopes. But the game absolutely lived up to the recent string of wacky Bedlam bouts.

“That was a heck of a college football game,” said Mike Gundy. “I wish we could have made a couple of plays at the end, but they ended up making a couple of plays at the end and we didn’t. We had our shot in the last couple of minutes and didn’t [take advantage].

“I told them that I’m proud of their effort, being resilient. I’ve been in a lot of weird games at Oklahoma State, but I don’t remember being in one like that.”

Here are five things we learned from Bedlam Saturday.

1. Baker was the best player on the field

There were some dudes on the Boone Pickens Stadium turf on Saturday. Obo Okoronkwo could be an early draft pick. As could James Washington and Mason Rudolph. And yet OU’s boisterous signal caller was, by all accounts, head and shoulders better than everyone else on the field.

“Going into the game we felt like we wanted to try to control Baker Mayfield, and we did a little bit in the first of the third quarter,” said Gundy. “But he made some plays. He’s a really good player. He makes plays and throws when he breaks contain that are pretty unusual. He’s a good player.”

No. 6 sliced up the OSU defense in the first half, leading the Sooners to 38 first half points, including 3 touchdown passes for a gaudy 387 yards. And he finished with 598 yards, 5 TDs, and 1 int — an OU record in passing yards in a game.

As far as NFL projections, Mayfield might not be a sure thing at the next level, but he was lights out and nearly flawless. OU might be an average football team without him. But with him, the Sooners are in the driver’s seat in the Big 12.

2. It was not a defensive clinic .. by either team

If you were told before the game that OSU would score 52 points, most Pokes fans would take that to the bank without question. But the OSU defense, which had played extremely well in the previous two weeks, struggled to contain the big plays — something it has done fairly well all season up to this point.

OU hit on touchdown scores of 49, 84, 43, 77 and 53 — both in the air and on the ground — to gash the OSU defense for 62 total points.

“We didn’t play as well on defense as we would have liked to,” said Gundy starkly. “That was pretty obvious.”

“I knew they were good,” Glenn Spencer said of OU, “but I never would have expected that. I knew [Baker Mayfield] was going to make some plays. We just gave him too many big plays.”

"Winning is expected. Winning against Oklahoma State is expected as well." – Mayfield on subdued celebration pic.twitter.com/LZzg55CbCD

— Bob Przybylo (@BPrzybylo) November 5, 2017

OU, for its part, wasn’t much better defensively. Despite a subpar game from Mason Rudolph, OSU put up 52 points and accumulated 661 total yards of offense, including 213 yards on the ground.

“We struggled all day to stop them and to be able to do it twice, we thought the game was over and then have what happened again, to do it again,” said OU defensive coordinator Mike Stoops. “It wasn’t pretty by any stretch of imagination. Our coverage was porous most of the day. We were fortunate to make stops in critical situations.”

You can play the ‘What if?’ scenario all day, but Rudolph missing Tyron Johnson on that 4th-and-8 with a chance to go ahead is going to be one that sticks for a long time.

3. Road Mason showed up to Bedlam

Mason Rudolph had to be nearly flawless to give OSU a shot on Saturday, and frankly, he was well below that by his own standards. His stat line: 28-of-54 passing for 448 yards, 5 TDs and 2 INT’s — including a costly fumble that awarded OU excellent field position inside its own 20, and a red zone interception into double coverage.

Still, OSU had a shot before a missed window on 4th-and-8 with the game on the line fell just yards in front of an open Tyron Johnson.

“Offensively, we rolled pretty good,” Gundy said. “We obviously threw an interception in the end zone when we were getting ready to take a lead. That’s one I wish we would have had back.”

Rudolph, despite the gaudy numbers, wasn’t his sharpest, overthrowing targets, sailing receivers across the middle of the field, and sometimes hanging on to the ball longer than he could afford.

To be clear, Rudolph wasn’t the reason OSU lost. OSU gave up 62 points and 785 yards of total offense, after all, but a perfect Rudolph could have covered up some of the mistakes made elsewhere. It just wasn’t quite enough.

4. Justice Hill had himself a day

Despite what appeared to be a very stout OU run defense coming into the day, Justice Hill had his way on the ground and the OSU offensive line paved big enough holes deep into the fourth quarter for him to have a career day.

Hill finished with 30 carries for 228 yards, two scores, and ran rampant on an OU defense that has been solid up front most of the season.

“He’s played a lot of really good games, and he ran the ball really well,” Mason Rudolph said. “He extended a lot of plays, broke a lot of tackles. Probably up there at the top [of his best games as a Cowboy].

Say what you will about whether Oklahoma players do or don’t treat the Bedlam rivalry differently, but I think the in-state kids treat this game differently than those that come from Georgia or Kansas or Missouri or anywhere else. He ran hard as hell Saturday and you could tell this one meant a lot to him. It’s a shame his monstrous performance will, for the most part, be a footnote.

Freak Show. pic.twitter.com/ASYowcgqGf

— Pistols Firing (@pistolsguys) November 4, 2017

5. Bedlam rematch?

It’s not the most likely of Big 12 title scanrios, but there certainly is one where OSU-Oklahoma could see a rematch with the conference crown on the line. We’ll get more into that later this week, but if OU or TCU loses twice, and OSU runs the table, it could happen.

“We win out and we may get another shot of these guys,” said Mason Rudolph. “That’s what I would love. I would love to go down to Arlington to get a second shot. Different things have to happen, but we can only control ourselves. So we gotta go win out.”