The Rundown: Gundy Talks Turnovers, Special Teams Heading into K-State

Mike Gundy wasn’t in a mood many would expect Monday morning.

In his first Monday news conference since his team’s first loss of the season, Oklahoma State’s coach was calm. Not an ignorant calm, but sort of a “ready to get back to work” calm.

Gundy joked back and forth with reporters throughout Monday’s half-hour presser. He pointed out that Bill Haisten was doing some household chores over Zoom, he joked that it was the first time in months Guerin Emig asked a non-COVID question and he joked that he couldn’t remember the last time he had a bowel movement was.

Here are the answers Gundy gave to questions asked to him following OSU’s OT loss to Texas.

On turnovers in Saturday’s game

“Well in the interception [Spencer Sanders] threw, he threw the ball behind the reviver, and the Texas guy was in good position. The ball-exchange issue, he needs to have a better grip on the ball. That’s his responsibility, the one that we dropped in the first quarter. That’s reps. The strip right before halftime, he was in the pocket for almost 5 seconds, and the guy came from behind. Little better feel for the game. Nobody’s open, pull it down, take off and run. LD’s, LD [Brown] got hit hard. He got spun around, the guy drilled him, made really good contact on the ball.

“That’s kind of an explanation of what happened, it was almost like a perfect storm. We had some issues to correct with Spencer last year, but what happened Saturday was not what we dealt with with him last year. Just had a little bit of the perfect storm. Hopefully we can get some of that corrected before the next game.”

On if it is a physical or mental thing for Sanders

“The one time he got the ball stripped. The first one was something that can be corrected. When he threw the ball behind the receiver a little bit, the kid from Texas was there and intercepted it, he picked a bad time to throw the ball behind him with that tight of coverage.

“I’m not as concerned about it as what I was after the game, just seeing what transpired.”

On if he has to walk a fine line when it comes to tempering Sanders

“You got to let him go, let him play. He’s aggressive. He’ll make some mistakes. He’s only played in nine games [14], I think, in his career. He’s still young. He’ll make some mistakes, but we don’t want to put a leash on him. We need to let him go. He makes a lot of plays. We don’t want to tone him down. We want to let him rip and play football.”

On if he is going to continue to play Sanders

“Sure. As I said, I see one issue with him, he needs to do a better job of gripping and strengthening the ball on the first handoff. What happened to him where he got stripped in the pocket before halftime, that happens to quarterbacks every Saturday and Sunday. That’s an experience gig that he needs to figure out. His biological clock needs to work a little quicker. Then he threw a bad ball, as I said, he picked a bad time to throw a bad ball. The Texas corner was right on his hip.

“I guess my explanation would be anything that people on the outside that haven’t studied the tape would see, there’s not a concern. We gotta let him rip and let him keep playing football. Let him gain a little more experience every game.”

On if watching film made him feel even better about how his defense played

“It did. It really did. We can’t take away Texas’ ability to force those turnovers. The strip on Spencer was what they coach and teach on their D-linemen, just like we do. The interception, the corner was in good position. He picked a bad time to throw it. On LD’s fumble, LD got spun around. The kid put his helmet right on the football and blew him up. So, Texas gets as much credit as we get the [turnover] credit.

“After I watched the video, I was just, you know, it’s hard for me as a coach, I’ve said this, I’ve said this for 16 years as a head coach: You beat me, you beat me. I’m good. It’s football. It’s life. It’s the way it is. I’m not taking anything away from Texas, all I’m saying is I would wish a little bit of that perfect storm would’ve went the other way. It certainly would’ve helped our team, but that’s football. That’s just the way it goes.”

On how the gameplan developed throughout the game with the turnovers

“It didn’t change. It stayed the same. We have to attack them a certain way. After watching the tape and seeing how some of the turnovers happened gives me a different opinion on it, but we didn’t let it effect us during the game.”

On special teams issues against Texas and leading into the K-State game

“We had two things happen [on Texas’ kick return TD], we had two guys out of place on kick return, and then we had one and a half missed tackles. You can look at that both ways; you can say we missed a tackle, or you can say they had a good athlete that made us miss. In special teams, it can go either way.

“Then on the block call, what happened with Kanion [Williams] is he got tripped up and then he fell on the foot of the punter with his helmet and his shoulder. But he had is hand extended, so they called a personal foul, a 15-yarder. Still to this day, I don’t know what’s a 5 and a 15-yarder. but that’s what happened on those plays.

“We only have so much time and so many reps, and we have to believe in our systems and we have to execute it. When we went up by 11 and then turned right around and gave them 7 points on the kickoff return, we had one and a half guys that had a chance to make a play, and we had two guys out of position. The area to correct on that is the two guys out of position. They’re the ones that need to fix the problem. Then we would’ve had three and a half guys there in front of him like there should have been. The scheme was fine. We gotta get that corrected with the players, which we did last night.

“Then on the punt block situation, he kinda got pushed down. He got pushed on the ground. I can’t blame the young man for it. He’s giving effort. It was a bad situation. He got into an area, and they decided to make it a personal foul.”

On Tylan Wallace

“Wallace had a good game. He’s a special player, and his attitude’s great, his work ethic’s been great, his competitive nature has been great. We just enjoy the games we have with him left before he moves onto the NFL.

On cleaning

“When I was being raised as a kid, my responsibility was vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms. And I am a vacuuming fool, and I am a bathroom-cleaning fool. And [Mike] Holder tries to save money, so I clean my own office, and I clean my own bathroom that’s in my office.”

On if Sanders being a perfectionist can work against him

“Both ways, my history in dealing with quarterbacks, it can work both ways. Spencer gets a little better every game. His composure in this game was good. He’s highly competitive. He plays aggressive. We want him to play aggressive. He takes the game too seriously at times. He’s getting better in that area. The emotions you see in postgame is the emotions that we want. We want that from the team, and we want that from every player that puts time in during the week. We work from Sunday night to Friday and then we get results on Saturday. Then we gotta start over each week. We do that 13, 14 times a year. This year 10. You’re either happy or you’re sad. That’s what we do each week.

“Tim Rattay, I think, is a really good counselor for him. Spencer knows that I’m here. He knows how I feel about it, but he’s gonna be closer to his position coach. I think that Tim has done a really good job in understanding his personality, because we’re all different, and dealing with him and helping keep his emotions in check.”

On if the game was a learning experience for Kasey Dunn as a playcaller

“I thought Kasey’s calls were excellent. The outside public would question the last call where [Sanders] got stripped and the other team got it and kicked a field goal with us being in field-goal position. I know that when I got home Saturday night, I got home a little after 1 a.m., and my youngest son was there and awake, and he was willing to question me on the same call based on we had a field goal and we turned around and gave them a field goal.

“We want to be aggressive. Sometimes it works against us, but we tell our football team that we want to be aggressive, we want to play to win and we want to compete. Now are there times that can work against you? Sure. But I don’t want to restrain our players from thinking we’re trying to score. The old coach’s cliché is if Spencer would’ve hit a dig route, and the guy would’ve ran in and scored a touchdown, everybody would’ve thought it was a great call.

“I’m very pleased with where Kasey’s at as a playcaller up through Game 5. I’m very pleased with where Jim Knowles is up through Game 5. I’ve called plays enough in my career to know that you’re gonna make some poor calls and then you stay up at and you kick yourself. But then you’re gonna make some good calls.

“The answer to that question would be, did he learn? Sure, I’m sure he learned. But he has to get my feel as a head coach of what I want to do. I want to be aggressive. I want to play to win. Sometimes it may work against us, but a lot of times in the last 16 years, it’s worked for us.”

“He’s doing really well. Kasey is kind of a low-key, laid-back guy. Might drink a whiskey on the rocks, might smoke a big cigar. But he is a hard worker. He’s very dedicated. He’s a self-made person throughout his career. He takes a lot of pride in it. He was more than ready for this job, and me watching him from whenever we made that decision, January, I don’t know what month is was, until now, I have been very impressed with him as a playcaller, a coordinator and a leader up to this point. There’s no doubt that I made the right decision in moving him to the coordinator position.”

On what needs to happen to get to a more consistent return game like with Perrish Cox and Dez Bryant

“In special teams, great returners, whether it’s punt or kickoff, can make coaches look a lot better, and all a sudden, you become a really good special teams unit. When you go back to [Justin] Gilbert, Perrish Cox, Dez Bryant, I can’t remember who the other guys were, you’re talking about NFL players. When you have an NFL player that’s returning kicks and punts, you all of a sudden become a better coach. Not taking away from special teams and the schemes involved. When we play Kansas State, we have to pay close attention to what’s going on because they’re good. They’ve been good at it for years. They kept the same philosophy ad structure and design with the coaching change, in my opinion as an outsider looking in. It’s the same.

“In most cases, special teams fall over the period of a season based on where you’re at with your ability to have a returner in the game that could potentially be athletic enough to play in the NFL.”

On if he has to adjust talking to the team about the College Football Playoff

“I’ve never talked to them about National Championship because I’ve said this for years and years and years, we have to win the conference championship first before we can even get into consideration with that. The percentages are, if you just look at what’s happened X number of years since we’ve had this, if you don’t win the conference championship, it’s extremely difficult to get in anyway. We talk a lot about that. That’s our goal here, but then we don’t talk beyond the very next day once we get into the season.

“I won’t ever mention a Big 12 Championship or the Playoffs. Young people, in my history, the 31 years or however long I’ve been coaching and dealing with these guys, it’s hard for them to understand a big picture and then focus and have a good day. Our culture and the system we believe in here is, we get Sunday to Friday to get ready to play Saturday. They have so many things that’s going on in there life that we’re just trying to get them to practice well tonight and absorb that information, and then we’ll worry about tomorrow. We just go day by day. That’s just my theory on it, and the best way to teach and train young men is to actually get into what they can absorb in one day.”

In the importance of a Big 12 title for the program

“I think each year I have to have in the back of my mind where we are and who we are as a team. And I do. If we stay healthy and our team chemistry continues like it is now, we have great team chemistry, these guys really care about each other. They play hard for each other. Our effort has been excellent. I told the team last night when I graded the tape Saturday night, I felt like that this team as a group has given more effort and is playing as hard as any team that we’ve had here since I’ve been the head coach.

“So, they’re doing their part. Sometimes the ball’s gonna bounce the other way. Hopefully our game plans in all three phases will be good enough to give our team a chance to win each week. Sometimes we can’t control the uncontrollable. But if I’m looking at big picture, we have everything in tact that we need, but myself, our staff and our team, we just still have to worry about tonight’s practice and just take it day by day.”

On how the team came out of the Texas game health-wise

“We’re gonna find out more Wednesday. We usually find out Tuesday, but we can’t practice tomorrow because of the election. We’re gonna try to get a little work today, and then all of our doctors will come in and examine the guys after tonight’s practice and kinda find out where we’re at. I think we’re gonna be OK. We’ve got some guys beat up that might not practice as much today, and then we’ll be able to get them back out there on Wednesday.”

On losing to Nebraska in 2010 after being unbeaten and having to go to Manhattan without Justin Blackmon and Tracy Moore, who were suspended

“I don’t remember as much about Nebraska as I do the suspension. We also suspended Tracy Moore if you remember, he didn’t play either. He was with him in the car. That was not an easy week for me as a head coach. The last thing I want to do is apply discipline to players during the season, during the week and actually keep a player from playing in a game, but certainly have standards here that we’ve kept in my 16 years as a head coach that we don’t budge on.

“I do remember that [Kansas State] game being a low-scoring game.

“I will say this about the Big 12 conference, I don’t think there’s much difference in a lot of teams in this league this year. Just about any team that plays week to week up to this point, that could change somewhat based on how teams improve over the next two to three weeks, but based on a majority of the teams in this league, everybody’s about the same. You’re dealing with the virus. You’re dealing with, depending on who’s dealing with injuries each week.

“I don’t get into all this, but you’re gonna see a lot of these games where your spreads are gonna be just very minimal. That’s based on the parity that’s in this league this year. With the exception of Texas, most of the teams that playing in the league this year are playing with quarterbacks that don’t have a lot of experience. That’s the other factor that doesn’t get talked about.

“It’s like Spencer, Spencer’s only played in about nine games now [14]. He’ll be considerably better at this time next year based on his experience. You saw the difference in [Sam] Ehlinger in this game in the fourth quarter and overtime than when we played them down there whatever years ago that was. Different player based on experience. There’s no substitute for that.”

On a text he received from former receiver Brandon Sheperd

“This is when you feel better as a coach, he said, ‘Coach, I’m sorry. That was a tough one last night. Proud of you guys for your body language and attitude. When Texas scored, the camera went to the sideline. I had no doubt those boys were ready to score again. I know we didn’t win, but that made me proud to be a Cowboy. Always control what you can control. The rest will fall into place.’

“So, I’m like, ya know, all the stuff I tell them, at least one kid listened. That was pretty cool.”