Two Ways Mike Gundy Said the Cowboys Can Be Better in 2025

FRISCO, Texas — The Cowboys’ 2024 season has to go down as one of the more head-scratching campaigns in the Big 12’s history.

Oklahoma State returned a large portion of a roster that won 10 games and played for a Big 12 championship just to go 3-9 — not winning a single Big 12 contest.

Things are different now. Mike Gundy cleaned house on his coaching staff, and with a large number of last season’s group finishing out their eligibility, the Cowboys hit the portal harder than they ever have before.

Sitting at a podium in the south end zone at The Star in Frisco at Big 12 Media Days on Wednesday, Gundy discussed what went wrong last season, pointing out two fixable issues regardless of which players are donning shoulder pads and Cursive Cowboy helmets in 2025.

“When I looked at last year, as I said earlier, a few things factored in, in a big way,” Gundy said.  “One, was our inability to run the ball, and in my opinion, we weren’t a very effective passing team. So, that took away from our ability to run. Once that happened, teams started seeing on video where our deficiencies were. They knew how to attack us. Snowball got going downhill, and we couldn’t get out of the way.”

The secret was out on star tailback Ollie Gordon going into last season. Gordon spearheaded the Cowboys’ 10-win 2023 season, running for 1,732 yards and 21 touchdowns en route to winning the Doak Walker and being named a consensus All-American.

Quarterback Alan Bowman also returned after winning the starting job in 2023 through a three-man position battle with Garret Rangel and Gunnar Gundy. Bowman’s stats were similar in 2023 and 2024. He completed 60.7% of his passes in 2023, throwing for 15 touchdowns and 14 interceptions. In 2024, he completed 60% of his passes for 16 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. The Cowboys struggled pushing the ball downfield in the pass game, though. According to Pro Football Focus, Bowman was just 8-for-48 (17%) on balls thrown 20 or more yards down field last season after going 21-for-62 (34%) on such throws in 2023.

The Cowboys’ defense schematically changed in 2024, with OSU for the most part doing away with the 3-3-5 system coordinator Bryan Nardo was hired to run. Gundy took accountability for having Nardo, in his first Division-I coordinator job, go away from what he was comfortable with.

“Defensively when I looked at it, as I said earlier, we went to a majority of a four-down,” Gundy said. “I didn’t feel like our personnel was set up for three-down, and I asked Bryan (Nardo) to get in a system that he wasn’t as familiar with.

“That wasn’t all Bryan’s fault. That was my fault, that part. And we couldn’t adjust as well as we needed to during the season in certain games and that was because of some of the unfamiliarity with the system.”

The pieces will be new in 2025. Gordon is with the Miami Dolphins, but there’s a talented group of rushers waiting to pick up that slack. After 51 games across seven seasons, Bowman finally ran out of college eligibility with Zane Flores and Hauss Hejny vying to fill his open spot. Every offensive lineman who started a game the past two seasons for the Cowboys is gone. Coaching veteran Todd Grantham was brought in to run OSU’s defense, one that appears to have more of a four-down look of previous seasons.

Despite all that change, Gundy seemed confident is the Cowboys’ ability to right those wrongs in 2025.

“So, those two things, you can fix,” Gundy said. “One way is the head coach not asking the coordinator to do something that maybe he’s not capable of, and the other is for us to stay healthy and be sound throwing the ball down the field which will allow us to rush the football better.”