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OSU’s Lack of Elite Success in the Red Zone is Nothing New Under Gundy

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Oklahoma State got inside Texas’ red zone six times on Saturday evening in Austin and walked away with just three TDs, which made the Cowboys three for their last eight in the red zone. In a TD-scoring league, this is the equivalent of shooting an elk with a nerf gun.

It’s also nothing new for the Pokes. They’ve been good but not great at converting red-zone trips into TDs over the last decade. Here’s a year-by-year look at where they’ve ranked nationally and what their conversion rate has been.

Year Rank TD Percentage
2019 54 65%
2018 34 67%
2017 43 65%
2016 58 62%
2015 26 67%
2014 109 50%
2013 8 75%
2012 26 67%
2011 37 65%
2010 25 67%

Other than two outlier years in 2013 (fire Yurcich!!) and 2014, OSU has been between 62-67 percent every year, which is where they’re at right now at 65 percent through four games.

Some of this is misleading, because I’m willing to bet that in that same span of time they’re top five nationally in long TDs of over 30 or 40 yards that never enter the red zone. But some of it is just plain frustrating when your QB is a dynamo and you have one, two, three … four (!) receivers (who play real minutes!) at 6’5 or (much) taller and an OC with a flair for magic.

Some of this is the unintended consequence of the spread. When your success is predicated on your ability to expand the field, things become much more difficult when it gets contracted for you when you’re inside the 20. You can’t flip from being Oregon to being Stanford just by talking into the headset.

“It’s not necessary that we need to do something different,” said Gundy about OSU’s lack of success in short-yardage situations on Saturday. “It just happened in that game that we were in position to score a couple times where. Traditionally, we would score touchdowns. That’s the glaring side of what happened in that game.

“Offensively, if we score those touchdowns and don’t kick field goals, it’d be a different game. It’s not necessary one thing or the other. Texas is going to make some plays also, they’ve got good guys and they are well-coached. They made some plays, and they ended up winning the game based on those key plays. Over the last 10 years, we made the majority of those plays, this year we didn’t.”

Gundy also emphasized not getting out of their world based on a handful of drives in Austin.

“I don’t want people thinking that we didn’t move the ball,” he said. “I don’t know how many yards we had, but I don’t want to hit the panic button and say we didn’t move the ball. We had two opportunities to score touchdowns, and we kicked field goals. That is eight less points. Then we tried a fake field goal when we could have taken more. I think it was just more of us not executing at the goal line.”

Being elite inside the red zone will always be an uphill battle for teams as explosive as OSU. But if Sean Gleeson’s past is any indication, he has the playbook (and the stones?) to push OSU into the territory it needs to occupy over that 70-percent mark. With a defense as dodgy as the Pokes’ defense always will be and a QB as complete as Sanders, it might be time for OSU to — inside the 20 anyway — explore that striped bag of tricks he brought over from the Ivy League.

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