Oklahoma State Has Made a Habit of Falling Apart Late in the Last Three Seasons

Here is a stat: In the first 10 games of the last three regular seasons, Oklahoma State is 26-4. In the last two games of the last three regular seasons, Oklahoma State is 1-4 and will eventually be 2-4 come Saturday after the Kansas game.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that good-looking Oklahoma State teams have faded down the stretch in the last few years. Part of that is scheduling. Baylor and OU were monsters in 2015, but remember, OSU was facing Baylor’s third string QB that season, and it still lost by double digits. OU was the loss last year — understandable as a conference champ. The Kansas State loss this year was more inexplicable.

Add it all in — stir it up, as Gundy would say — and you get a lot of questions. Is OSU not deep enough? Can it not close out seasons? Is this perplexing stat simply a result of lopsided scheduling? Can we ever expect a Mike Gundy-coached team to finish a year strongly ever again?

These are fair questions for a team whose trajectory seemed to be upward rather than flat over the course of Mason Rudolph’s tenure in Stillwater. Maybe it just means that OSU overachieved in 2015, achieved in 2016 and underachieved in 2017.

But I think the W-L record tells us that, whatever the underlying reason, OSU has nothing left at the end of regular seasons. Part of that could be a result of how many plays they’re on the field for throughout the year (something it feels like we prop up as an excuse at the end of every year).

I’ve seen a lot of “it’s time to reevaluate hitting in practice” talk over the last 24 hours, and I don’t really think that’s the answer. Gundy has been innovative in his time on the sideline at OSU, and it has worked. That’s an opinion that’s impossible to measure, of course, but it makes sense to me and as a former well-below-mediocre college athlete, I think it adds up. Plus, you’re not going to get less tired by playing more and harder throughout the year. If anything, I think OSU’s players have been managed quite well over the past few years, I just think the plays start to add up come Games 11 and 12.

Only four Power 5 teams have played more offensive plays than OSU this year. Only 10 Power 5 teams have faced more plays on defense. Is it as simple as “OSU is just exhausted by the end of the year both emotionally (close games) and physically (tons of plays) and has nothing left to give at the end of November”? Maybe so.

Let’s take a look at Oklahoma State’s winning percentage by game since 2005. OSU has won nearly all of its first three games of the season. It has also been around 75 percent in most of its other games. Then you get to the end of the year.

OSU overall winning percentage since 2005: 68 percent
Game 11: 46 percent
Game 12: 18 percent

That’s not good!

OU games are one thing, but what about that Game 11 number? There are losses to Kansas State, Baylor, Texas Tech and Iowa State in there. Not exactly a murderer’s row. Here’s a look at the exact percentage of each game.

Gundy seemed helpless when searching for reasons OSU fell flat on Saturday against KSU.

“I didn’t feel like it was (lifelessness), we just weren’t making plays,” said Gundy. “I didn’t think it was lifeless. I’m just a little puzzled why in the first half playing at home with the crowds we have that are unbelievable … why we can’t perform better in the first half.”

Look, I know everybody wants answers. You make a 73 on the calculus test, and you want your teacher to show you the answers to the questions you missed. Unfortunately this doesn’t work like that. There are a thousand smaller factors and maybe some bigger institutional ones that play in. I have no idea what they are. I’m not sure anyone (including Gundy) does.

All I know is that if you’re Gundy and the coaches and you’re looking at the chart above, you’re saying “wow, we are really good in games 1-7 in the Big 12 and really, really bad in games 8-9. We must fix this.”

Does that mean not running Justice Hill 35 times in each of the first seven conference games? Maybe. Does that mean scheduling tougher teams in the non-conference to prepare you for conference play? Maybe.

I don’t know what it means, but I know that for OSU to contend for and win a Big 12 Championship in the next 4-5 years, they’re going to have to figure out how to ensure the closing act is as good as the rest of the show.