Oklahoma State’s Returning Experience Should Make for a Faster Start to 2024, It Had Better

Oklahoma State returns a lot from a team that won 10 games and made a Big 12 Championship appearance last winter. Like a lot a lot. But will that returning experience be enough to get the Cowboys off to a faster start than last year? It had better.

The Cowboys, still trying to figure out who was taking snaps and who was taking handoffs, got picked on by South Alabama in Week 3 and then lost in Ames to start Big 12 play, dropping them to 2-2. The Pokes were somehow able to salvage that into a double-digit win season and their second Big 12 Championship game appearance in three years. But if they want to live up to their potential and fanfare in 2024, they’ll need to have things figured out before October this time around — and they’d better hit the ground running.

“We have a difficult nonconference schedule, so experience is going to help us in this area,” said Mike Gundy at OSU’s Media Day. “It allows us to move forward a little quicker than what we’ve been able to over the last few years, which is necessary, because we’re going to need to back off a little earlier in order to get ready to play in the first game.”

In their season opener, the Cowboys will face South Dakota State, not your average FCS team. The Jack Rabbits won’t have lost a game in two calendar years. Then the Cowboys will host Arkansas, a bad SEC team last year but one that still has SEC athletes and will be desperate both to rebound and prove its conference’s supremacy. And regardless of how good the Hogs are, or Tulsa a week later, the Cowboys will need to resist the urge to look ahead to back-to-back games against Utah and Kansas State, the two teams picked ahead of them in the Big 12 this preseason.

But this team feels different than last year’s team. It’s tested and deep, and it’s rallied around Ollie Gordon while he’s gone from a niche local X-factor at this time last year to a household name. It also has possibly the most experienced quarterback in the country in seventh-year veteran Alan Bowman.

The Cowboys also have plenty of seasoned playmakers spotted throughout their defense and that group now has a full year under defensive coordinator Bryan Nardo.

“Last year, we were all trying to figure our identity out,” said senior edge rusher Collin Oliver. “We had a slower start, and that bye week going into Kansas State, we figured it out. I think that bye week from last year helped us out from then up until now. We’re all bought in as a team, and Coach Nardo, he’s doing his best job.”

Let’s look at that experience, one of the big buzz words for the Pokes this offseason.

The Cowboys are ranked second nationally with a returning production rate of 85%, behind only Iowa State at 86%. What’s more impressive is that those returning won 10 games and made a conference championship game last year. Of the top 10 teams in terms of that metric, OSU is one of only two, along with Iowa, to return that experience from a 10-win team.

That combo of experience and talent can’t help but create confidence. You can hear it in the way Gundy talks about his team and the way his players talk about this season. Redshirt senior linebacker Justin Wright provided a peek inside the locker room, at just how confident this team is heading into 2024.

“We could be down 21-0 in the first quarter and this type of experienced team will not get down on themselves, not be negative, come back and end up winning the game,” said Wright. “To the same degree, we could be up 21 and not coast the rest of the game. We will finish games.”

Of course, it will all get sorted out on the field. The Cowboys would very much like to plant their flag at the top of the new-look Big 12 and even get a crack at the new 12-team College Football Playoff model. If they can get off to a fast start, they just might have the talent and experience to do it.