Oklahoma State’s Bye Week Came at the Perfect Time (Sort Of)

Oklahoma State has the perfect schedule. I mean the perfect schedule. Get your tough road games out of the way early and come home to win the conference title in November. It could not have been scripted any better.

Their bye week, I thought, was also coming at the perfect time. QB1 agrees.

“I think it couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Mason Rudolph. “For us to be getting into the six games and play well, and being able to get a week’s rest and get our legs back is a great chance for us to recuperate.”

Glenn Spencer does too. I often think of NFL players as the ones who endure severe beatings on the weekends. But college guys aren’t exempt either.

“We have a bunch of guys with nicks, sprains and bruises that need some time to heal,” said Spencer. There were three or four guys who didn’t get a lot of work today. They’re just not ready. Thank goodness we don’t have to play on Saturday.”

Interestingly, Mike Gundy sort of disagrees.

“I think the perfect open date would be after the fourth game because you’re eight weeks into it,” said Gundy. “A lot of times people forget about the preseason. But for us, fortunately we’re 6-0 so it worked out well and we get a break going into the next week so the timing was really good for our team this year.”

That makes sense. It also makes for a long back half of the season. And this is one thing we haven’t discussed when it comes to Gundy’s philosophy this year. When you want to be in fistfights like OSU clearly does, it takes a toll on your squad. You might not have the injury pile OSU currently has if you were more “spread it out and see what happens” like Baylor is. Maybe you would. But it’s something to consider when constructing a team.

Nevertheless, OSU is 6-0, gets a weekend off to watch everyone else beat each other up this weekend and will likely be that much closer to remaining the only undefeated team in the country when they take the field next Saturday.

“They’re resilient,” said Gundy. “The two places where we won close games on the road were not easy places to win so we’re very proud of them for that. We’ve told them that. We had meeting this week and told them everything and the way we feel. We’re very open with our team and the areas we need to improve on. They were able to stay calm and absorb information, had a great attitude and they played really hard at the end of the game so we benefited from that.”

There’s a reason for that.

Gundy coaches kids that don't give up. That's always been true and why he is a valuable coach.

— Evan Epstein (@EvanEpstein60) October 11, 2015