Kansas State Had Its Way with Oklahoma State’s Defense on Saturday

The Cowboys took an L on their home field for the third time this season and it might be one of the worst losses in the Mike Gundy era. A team with playoff hopes prior to the season and Big 12 title aspirations as recently as this afternoon, succumbed to a 5-5 opponent which hadn’t won a game in Stillwater since people were still worried about Y2K.

The Cowboys offense struggled for big chunks of the game — going 29:56 worth a game time between touchdowns — but OSU’s defense didn’t do the Pokes any favors either, giving up oodles of yards and points to a three-score underdog.

A defense whose praises I was singing (and so were some of you) after back-to-back solid outings against Texas and West Virginia, gave up numbers well above the Wildcats’ season average — with a third-string quarterback.

Let’s take a look.

This will likely go down as one of the worst losses during Mike Gundy’s tenure. And with just a senior night game against Kansas on the horizon and whatever bowl game the Cowboys draw, there isn’t an optimistic spin you can easily fit on it.

There’s plenty of blame to go around but for huge chunks of this game, OSU’s defense allowed a sub-par offense with its third QB to run up and down the field at will. There’s definitely not a positive spin for that.

It goes deeper than that. According to our PF Defense stat, three of Oklahoma State’s four worst defensive performances have come in the last three weeks. This stat takes your opponent’s PPD number (for Kansas State, it is 2.15) and creates an expected number of points you should give up based on how many drives you face.

For OSU on Saturday, that was 32.13 because KSU had 15 drives of more than zero plays (we don’t count the kick return). The Pokes gave up just over the expected value, but again, KSU wasn’t really trying to score on its last 3-4 drives.

Here are the defensive performances for OSU ranked from first to worst in the Big 12 this year.