The Rundown: Gundy Talks Yurcich, Ehlinger, Defensive Recruiting

Mike Gundy’s Cowboys are 4-0 heading into what’s always a highly anticipated matchup: Texas.

Gundy had his weekly media news conference Monday morning. Gundy went for a long while Monday. Here is part one of what he said. You can find part two here.

On playing against former offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich

“Well, I’m excited for Mike’s career. Mike’s earned everything he’s gotten to this point. He’s worked extremely hard, he has a lot of confidence, smart football coach and he was extremely loyal during the time that he was here and had a chance to move on and better himself and eventually be a head coach some day. So, I’m not looking forward to facing him. I know what kind of offensive coach he is, but it is what it is. We keep rolling. It’s not the first time we’ve faced guys that have worked for me over the last 10 years.

Once Mike made the adjustment from his level to this level, which was pretty quick, he’s like most guys across the country right now. He’s a hard worker. He’s loyal. He understands football. He’s very aggressive, and he’s gotten a little bit better each year. I don’t know that he has any weakness that would be any different than any other offensive coordinator. If you call a play and you catch them in the right coverage, you made a good call. If you catch them in the wrong coverage, you made a bad call. Overall, just a smart guy, and I go back to his loyalty and hard word has got him to the point where he is today.”

On how good OSU’s offense can be

“I don’t have any idea. We got good skill players. We’re coming along a little bit as an offensive line. We’ve made some strides. We have to be protective, somewhat, of what we do offensively. We’re not in a position to be like we have been in the last 10 or 12 years here where we can just open everything up and Katy bar the door. As we develop as an offensive line, we’ll get a little bit better as an offense throughout the season.

“We’re not far along right now on the offensive line. We’ve got two guys playing the offensive line that have three games of experience in their career. For that reason, 40 percent of your offensive line doesn’t have any experience. We just have to be a little careful.”

On trying to stop Sam Ehlinger

“We had a real challenge last week with [Brock] Purdy and a little bit different challenge this week with Sam. Sam is a really big, strong running quarterback. They’re gonna use 11 personnel and 12 personnel, and they’ll design runs for him. He’s not scared to run. He’ll run like a tailback. They gain an extra hat that way. We’ll have to be really good up front, make sure we’re in our gaps and not get our eyes violated. Safeties and backers that also have pass coverage as well as run support on the quarterback, we’ll have to be really good in our run keys this week.

“They’re in a different system this year. They have a new coordinator, so the years in past, there are a few similarities but the rest of it you can throw out the window. You’re game planning for a different scheme this year, but you’re also game planning for a very, very efficient quarterback that can run and throw and plays really hard. Those are more difficult to prepare for than necessarily what the schemes are.”

On what he sees from Texas’ offense that has Yurcich’s fingerprints on it

“There’s a lot of 11 personnel. There was more 12 personnel against Baylor. There are some things in there that Yurcich is involved in, and then there’s some similarities from what they’ve been in the past. It looks like that they’ve come together on some sort of a bipartisan agreement of what to run on offense. All the quarterback run stuff, your quarterback power and things that you see, that’s not necessarily what Mike’s done in his history. That’s some carryover of what they’ve done in the past.”

On if facing Yurcich is any different than facing other former assistants

“I don’t even know who’s on the sideline. When we play OU, I forget Cale [Gundy] is over there. I’m involved in the game and thinking and whatever. I forgot Les [Miles] was coaching at Kansas. That’s never been a factor. There are some issues with having as many coaches that we’ve had that are scattered throughout this league, but not necessarily on game day as much as just concepts, terminology, communication, planning, different areas like that are a little more difficult than it was when I started my career and we didn’t have coaches scattered all through the league.”

On if Spencer Sanders getting more game reps will help elevate OSU’s offense

“He played pretty good. There was times that he did things that I don’t think he would’ve if he didn’t get injured last year and would’ve had the five or six games under his belt and the three or however many he missed this year. He’s still not really to that point where he’s an experienced player, and I said this after the game, his composure was much better than it has been in his career here at Oklahoma State. That’s a start for him. He needs to stay level-headed. I love a competitive, fiery nature, but I don’t necessarily want a guy to be that way at quarterback if he can’t control his emotions with all the information that we give them to play quarterback here. Eventually he’s gonna get better through reps and game experience.”

On Tulsa linebacker Zaven Collins

“He’s a good football player. Guy’s gonna play in the NFL, would be my guess. Certain players that we compete against, we have to know where they are on the field and based on what their position is. His being a guy that can be a run defender and a pass defender, we have to be aware of where he’s at during the game. Our quarterbacks know where he’s at during the game, or they are supposed to know where he’s at. When you compete against teams who have a number of guys like that, it becomes more difficult to understand where they are on the field.”

On Jake Springfield

“Jake’s come a million miles in a short time. His best years are ahead of him. The one thing that he’s lacking is experience. We can’t do anything about that. We can just try to get him a little bit more each day. We’re really excited about him. His offseason, his body’s changed completely, his strength levels, his ability to move his feet, he’s a cerebral player. He keeps his composure. He’s competitive. He likes football. If you’re talking specifically about him and where he’s at from a month ago, he’s come a long ways, but he still has a long ways to go just based on experience.

“He’s played good. He was average against Iowa State. He was good against Kansas. That’s what we expect from those guys, and that’s kinda where we’re at. The question earlier is we have some limitations right now based on where we’re at on the offensive line. We just try to fight and scrape and score enough points to win each week.”

On defensive recruiting

“About three or four years ago, we’ve changed our thought process in recruiting in our organization. We’ve switched more scholarships to defense. It’s either two or three years ago, I can’t remember with the recruiting classes, we’ve eliminated recruiting corners and safeties and linebackers. We recruit a certain player that we feel like can play any of those five spots and they’re fast enough to cover. You might have a corner that’s playing a free safety spot.

“Traditionally, you’d take a 210 or 215-pound guy and put him at safety. In this league, he can’t cover anybody. If he’s 215 pounds and he can cover slot receivers in this league, he’s gonna be playing in the NFL. A lot of times, we don’t bring guys in already made to play in the NFL here at Oklahoma State, so we’re looking for more guys that can run and have ability to make plays when the ball is in the air. When you talk about [Jarrick] Bernard, you talk about [Tanner] McCalister, you talk about [Kolby] Peel, talk about Tre [Sterling], even [Thomas] Harper, little Harper is a guy that bounces around and plays different spots, those are all guys that we have brought in here to fit what we think the style of play needs to be defensively in this league to give us the best chance to win.

“We have five guys that play, you’re playing with corners and three safeties. Malcolm Rodriguez has bumped inside. He got so big that we had to move him inside. At some point, his ability to cover really fast guys in the slot was not as good as it was when he showed up here because he put on 20 pounds of muscle. I guess what I’m saying is, we’re trying to take fast guys that can cover and then we’ll move them wherever we need to move them in those spots. We don’t necessarily consider them safeties. We’re trying to find guys that can cover and then teach them how to tackle and get guys down in space.

“We’re not always accurate in how much weight and body mass a young man can put on. We might recruit a legitimate corner that’s 175 pounds in high school, and we feel like he could play one of those spots where they have to cover receivers. But if he gains 20 pounds, then he’s not gonna be back there playing in a spot where he is high over the top of coverage. He’s gonna be an invert guy where he’s not exposed as much, is a term we used, to speed. We move those guys around, and we have the flexibility with our coverages with what Jim [Knowles] is doing that we can adjust guys based on the teams we play each week and what their strength is offensively in our opinion.”