Three Things that Could Derail Oklahoma State’s Dream Season

There is much hype surrounding Oklahoma State’s 2017 season. The flip side of that is that there is a long way to fall if it goes poorly. We have been talking a lot about what could be in dream OSU football world. But the other side? Well, it invokes Ernest Hemingway-esque visions in my head.

“He looked for a potential season-breaker. The potential season-breaker was there.”

When you consider what appears to be an unknown at cornerback, the kicking competition which Mike Gundy has not convinced me is fully solved and the lack of Heisman Trophy-type protection on the offensive line in recent memory, there are certainly things that could go wrong.

That was a long sentence. This list is not. Here are the top three ways the Cowboys’ most hyped season in years could fall short of expectations.

3. Lack of Defensive Identity

There are a few potential derail-ers on the defensive side of the ball, but I’ll try to address the most dangerous. There has been loads of talk about the 3-3-5 defense OSU ran toward the end of the 2016 season, but it’s still not clear whether that will be the full-time defensive identity defensive coordinator Glenn Spencer will go with.

Giving an offense different looks is important, but for all but a handful of plays in the first quarter of the Alamo Bowl, OSU went with its traditional 4-3. They also employed a 3-3-5 and a 3-4. Colorado was a run-heavy team, so that’s likely why they didn’t use the 3-3-5 as much, but it only kind of worked against Texas Tech last year.

Having a bread-and-butter look is extremely important defensively. Too many changes in the scheme can cause confusion in coverages, personnel, alignments and assignments. If it’s going to be the 3-3-5, fine, but I’d like to see them pick something and stick with it.

2. The Tulsa Game (or the Pitt game)

Had OSU not lost* to Central Michigan last year, who knows what would have happened.

The Cowboys would have been 10-1 heading into Bedlam against a 9-2 Sooner squad. But if they beat the Chips, they would have had three straight confidence boosters before the Baylor game. Maybe they would have won that game, too. Maybe they would have reached all of their goals, which were all still intact.

Tulsa is last season’s Central Michigan. We hear it all the time. “One game at a time.” “One game at a time.” “We’re taking it one game at a time.” This is most clearly the only way to prove that because last year, that didn’t happen.

This is the best second chance at a good first step toward a season that could end up having 14 of them. And the Pittsburgh game two weeks later is another one. Win those two convincingly, and it could be off to the races for the Pokes.

If they blow one of the two, though, the dream season could be over before it truly begins.

1. Mason Rudolph

His play is not what I’m worried about.

This extends to Justice Hill to a lesser degree, but if Rudolph gets injured, it’s hard to see a way through. When J.W. Walsh got hurt early in 2014 and Daxx Garman came in, … yeah, no.

Maybe Keondre Wudtee would come off the bench as many freshmen quarterbacks have at this university and lead the Cowboys to hope and salvation, but Gundy is so reticent to play freshmen, we might never even see that come to pass.

This team goes as Rudolph goes, and if he doesn’t, the Cowboys will have to scrape away a patina of ambiguity and inexperience to find what they’re looking for. And by then, it could be too late.