Josh Sills Using Experience to Motivate Cowboys after Tough Loss

Josh Sills has seen a season collapse before, and he is determined to not let it happen this season.

With West Virginia in 2018, Sills and the Mountaineers came to Stillwater at 8-1 and ranked as the seventh-best team in college football. OSU was unranked at 5-5 and beat the Mountaineers.

West Virginia went on to lose their final two games of the season, as the Cowboys were able to derail that Mountaineer team.

“The biggest thing that I said is you can’t hang your head,” Sills said his message was to the Cowboys after Saturday’s loss. “Obviously everybody was disappointed, upset and mad we lost, as we should’ve been, but you can’t hang your head. You can’t dwell on a loss because the minute that you dwell on that loss, it carries over week to week to week.

“I was in a similar situation in 2018 when I was up at West Virginia when I was on that team and we came here, and that debacle happened in Stillwater. I think we were ranked in the top 10. Ended up getting beat that game, and we went back to Morgantown. Everybody hung their heads, couldn’t get over it, didn’t watch film. And we went on to lose the next [two] games after that.”

There are similarities between that spot Sills was in and 2018 and here in 2020. OSU was ranked sixth Saturday and lost to an unranked Texas squad on the same field Sills’ WVU team got derailed.

But Sills is wiser given his experiences, and he is trying to instill that knowledge on his new Cowboy teammates.

“That was my biggest message is, if you dwell on that, the loss, then that’s what can happen,” Sills said. “You come in, you watch film, you work, you run and you put it behind you. Once film is over, you go out, you put your cleats on, your helmet on, your pads, you go out to practice. It’s over. It’s done with. Forget about it.

“You have a brand new week, a brand new opportunity to go 1-0. That’s the biggest goal and the biggest message that all of the leaders on this football team have made it a point this week, that it’s a new week, it’s a new team and it’s a new opportunity to go 1-0.”