Ranking the OSU defense after Missouri State

Coming into this game, everyone figured OSU would have no problem beating Missouri State. In games like this, you hope your team does three things well:

1. Plays the game with a high level of energy despite being a heavy favorite.

2. Executes plays with as few mistakes as possible.

3. Gets some of the younger guys on the roster some reps.

With that, let’s get to the rankings of how I thought the defensive/special teams units performed:

1. Special Teams

One blocked punt, one blocked field goal and one blocked PAT. That’s ridiculous. This is only the second time that a team has accomplished this (Oregon State vs. USC, 1996).

2. Defensive line

No surprise here that the defensive line unit performed the great on Saturday. A week after giving FSU’s line all it could handle, OSU’s front four came out Saturday and got after the Missouri State offense in impressive fashion.

In total, OSU’s defense tallied five sacks on the day. Jimmy Bean had 1.5 sacks, Sam Wren had 1 and Victor Irokansi provided one off the bench in the 4th quarter.

3. Linebackers

I thought the linebackers did well against the run. Mobile quarterbacks like MSU’s Kierra Harris can cause a lot of problems against an inexperienced group of linebackers.

There were a few times in this game where missed assignments led to long runs, but that will be fixed in no time as this starting group (and the backups) gets more reps.

4. Cornerbacks

Peterson and Lampkin played aggressive the entire time they were in. The coverage was pretty good and they did fairly well on coming up to stop the run.

Lampkin cleaned up the defensive holding calls that plagued him against FSU and went the entire game without one penalty.

This game was also the first time this season we got a good look at the other corners on the bench. Behind Peterson and Lampkin, the next three corners on the depth chart are all freshman.

There were some missed assignments from the corners, but I wouldn’t worry too much going forward. This talented group of corners will start settling into their role on defense and prove to be big time this season.

5. Safeties

I really do enjoy the physical nature of these safeties. It’s almost like they would prefer to defend against the run so that way they could have a chance to come up and lay a hit.

They’re not the biggest safeties in the conference, but they definitely don’t play small.

The secondary looked a little confused at times on Saturday and it showed when Missouri State got a couple of long pass plays, two of which resulted in touchdowns.

Things like that tend to happen when you’re going against a team with a fairly decent mobile quarterback; you don’t want to give up the big pass play, but you’re always on edge wondering if the QB will tuck it and run. Like every other position group Saturday, I was overall pleased with the performance from the safeties.

Overall, I say it was a good day for the defense. A lot of people look at the scoreboard and see the ‘23’ under Missouri State’s name and probably wonder how I could say that. Well, the defense came away from the game with more positives than negatives, no injuries and, above all, more experience.

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