Porter’s Five Takeaways from the 2017 Oklahoma State Football Season

After an up-and-down 9-3 season, Oklahoma State will head to the Camping World Bowl to face a nasty Virginia Tech defense that upended West Virginia early in the year. It’s not exactly how we saw the season panning out as the Pokes lost three at home and didn’t even match last year’s postseason destination in San Antonio.

Slavin five takeaways
Cox five takeaways

I’ve had a few weeks to digest what unfolded in 2017 and what’s to come in the future years, and I have five takeaways

1. Rudolph not what I thought

This one is tough given that he just led a more efficient offense than Brandon Weeden did in 2011 (#factsonly), but I thought Mason Rudolph’s trajectory was as a Heisman Trophy candidate and, at the very least, a Big 12 title game participant. I was wrong, though, and fair or not, Rudolph will be judged by those final drives against Kansas State and Oklahoma. He had the ball in his record-setting hands twice with the season at stake, and he didn’t get it done either time. We can talk about penalties and dropped passes and whatever else you want to talk about, but we all watched the same thing.

He had incredible games (Pitt, Tulsa and Iowa State) and lousy ones (TCU and Kansas State), but the main argument against Rudolph for me is that he didn’t seem to possess it during his senior year. An ambiguous, indescribable thing, to be sure, but it seemed to me throughout his first two and a half years that he had that elusive quality that makes great players all-timers. This year, it did not manifest itself.

Maybe he actually does and OSU’s defense was just far worse than I thought, but his career did not end the way I thought its trajectory said it would throughout. While it’s correct that he will own all the records and garner all the spoils, he never really won very many monstrous games.

Against top 25 by year

2014: 1-1
2015: 1-2
2016: 3-2
2017: 2-2
Overall: 7-7

Depending on how OSU does in the bowl game, he will end with either a slightly above or slightly below .500 record against top 25 teams. Really good college QB? Sure. All-time ice man in the clutch against Big Daddy™ teams?

Not so sure about that.

2. Justice Hill, Superstar

I came into this season dubious that Justice Hill was going to end up being better than Joe Randle. *Grabs megaphone, turns volume all the way up, looks both ways and clears the children out of the way*

JUSTICE HILL IS A LOT BETTER THAN JOE RANDLE!

Oklahoma State should have to set up a fund straight to the good people of Eugene to funnel at least a percentage of Marcus Arroyo’s new salary as the offensive coordinator there. He set the Pokes up for years of success with Hill, J.D. King and Chuba Hubbard, and Hill is a legitimate preseason All-American candidate in 2018.

Hill averaged over 5 yards per carry in seven different games and posted a 5.5 YPC average for the season behind a line that might be good but probably wasn’t great. And his biggest game of them all came with everything on the line — 30 for 228 yards and 2 TDs against OU with the conference teetering in the balance. A spectacular season for one of the best Oklahoma State running backs in a long line of them.

He also provided us with more GIFs than we can possibly use in a single offseason.

3. Timing is everything

I say this a lot, and it’s true. What if you switch the TCU and Kansas State games? What if this season doesn’t coincide with the most impressive offensive year from a single team and player since Jameis Winston led FSU to a title in 2013? What if Vincent Taylor doesn’t turn pro? What if OSU’s linemen get hurt for Kansas and not TCU? What if Mayfield never gets that extra year from the NCAA? What if the Bundage TD isn’t overturned?

There are so many little things that happen over the course of a year, both on and off the field, that affect entire programs. It’s astonishing, really, and might drive me mad as a coach.

All that to say, things are never as simple as they seem. (I say that as someone who essentially boiled Mason Rudolph’s four-year career down to two plays in point No. 1). Great teams can overcome timing (see: OU), but good teams on the brink of great? They need a lot of breaks. Oklahoma State got their share in 2017 but not enough to produce a championship-worthy season.

4. Marcell Ateman, future pro

Hayden Barber said he thought Marcell Ateman might be a first round pick in the 2018 NFL Draft around when the first of the season started, and I secretly thought he was nuts. I still don’t think that will actually happen, but my goodness, he was incredible this year. And he showed a dominance that might play better in the physical, fast NFL than what James Washington showed.

Ateman finished No. 19 in the country in yards per game and ranked third behind Washington and UCF’s Tre’Quan Smith in yards per catch (min. 50 catches). I thought it would be the case that Ateman would often be the go-to guy on third and long when OSU had to have a first down (and it was).

What I didn’t realize, though, is that that would translate into the first season in Oklahoma State history with two 1,000-yard receivers and that No. 3 would make himself a whole lot of paper in the process. ?

5. Swagger wasn’t there

One thing I’ve taught my four-year-old daughter is to tack a “city” on to everything that is an extreme. For example, the other day a car zoomed past us on the highway and she yelped, “blaze city!” which was both hilarious and true. Another example is that the other night when I went into her and her brother’s room for the 38th time since putting them to bed, I said, “You know what’s going to happen if this happens again, right?” “Yeah, spanks,” replied my son. “No, spank city,” she corrected.

All that to say, the 2011 Oklahoma State football team was swag city, state and country. Swag universe. This one? It talked the talked. And it walked the walk early against Tulsa and Pitt. But come the Big 12, and they didn’t hammer anybody (save Baylor and Kansas). Just once, against teams like Texas, Texas Tech, Kansas State, Iowa State and West Virginia, I wanted to see a “forget this, we’re one of the five best teams in the country and we’re doing whatever we want tonight” statement. It never came. Instead, three losses did.

I don’t know if that’s a culture thing or a lack of talent thing, but I do know it happened much more in 2011. Maybe that’s revisionist history, but the scores from 2011 tell me something different. Tech, Missouri, Baylor and OU — three teams that won 8+ games, including a Heisman winner — and OSU pounded them. This team lacked that killer instinct, for whatever reason, and as a result it will play in a bowl named after a recreational vehicle company instead of one named after a flower come the postseason.