An Important Lesson For OSU On Saturday? Just Do What You Do

My biggest criticism of Mike Yurcich when you compare him to Dana Holgorsen and Todd Monken is that it sometimes feels like he’s trying to think beyond his players, beyond his level of talent on the field. He’s trying to do too much instead of just sticking to what Oklahoma State does best and mixing in a trick play once every 20 downs for effect.

On Saturday that changed. Mike Gundy said as much after the game.

“I felt like in the last few years in a short period of (practice) time … we tried to reinvent the wheel based on the 3-3-5,” Gundy told the Oklahoman about West Virginia’s finicky defense. “We didn’t do that today. We ran the same plays that we’ve always run. We just tried to adjust to them a little bit based on what they do.”

There’s a lesson in here, and I’m sure Thomas Fleming will get to it later on: Do what you do. Don’t do more. Don’t do less. Stay in your lane and be great at it. Take what the other team gives you. Throw those underneath routes to McCleskey and Washington forever.

This is admittedly a difficult lesson. Would I love to be Kirk Herbstreit or Joel Klatt or Scott Van Pelt? Sure. But it’s probably not going to happen because that’s not my wheelhouse. That’s not where I thrive. That’s not what I’m good at.

Bill Simmons is learning this with his new TV show. Carson and I talked about this on Saturday night over tacos at Fuzzy’s after a night under the neon palms. Simmons is not great at TV, but he is (or was) great at podcasts and writing. Don’t try to be something you are not.

Self-awareness. OSU doesn’t always have it, but when it does, it becomes clear how good this team can be (I admit it’s much easier to remain self-aware when your QB is spot-on over the middle). It did on Saturday, and the result was an incredible performance over a top 10 team.

Mike & Mike didn’t get too fancy on offense. They took rush yards where they could, didn’t force the deep ball (although that is certainly part of this team’s identity when other defenses allow it) and let Mason Rudolph go to work.

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“Being able to read the defense and know the looks of when they’re fitting and when they’re playing pass coverage, it’s a credit to the offensive staff,” Rudolph told the Oklahoman. “Coach (Mike) Yurcich did an awesome job of preparing this offense all week.”

OSU is never going to be Alabama. That’s not its identity. It’s never going to be Texas Tech or Kansas State. That’s not its identity either. For one day on Saturday, though, instead of trying too hard to be something it wasn’t. It remained exactly what we thought it could be all along: a really, really good college football team with an outstanding QB and a turnover-minded defense.

More of that over the next four games, please.