What do we know about OSU?

I think it is hard to gauge most teams, OSU and Utah included, as we don’t really know who is good or not, and games can be so crazy early in the season.
I have watched as much OSU as I have been able to. They showed a lot of heart in their comeback against Arkansas. I will say, the score in that one may be a little misleading as I think 11 of their points came from the OTs. The Tulsa game is also a harder one to judge by. It looked like Bowman was on, but like how Rising was on for the SUU game (good throws, but the coverage was not keeping up with the receivers and the pass pro looked excellent). I think most teams have been playing not to let Ollie Gordon kill them, and that has held him in check but opened it up for Bowman and his WRs who have looked quite good.

I don’t know what to make of this. I am biased and have the Utes by around a TD, but I think there will be a decent amount of points. I am glad we got a road game in last week and hope we adjust. I think there is a lot to clean up, so I am kind of glad we got pushed more by USU than expected and hope it leads to great focus in this game. I think we get something in the 34 to 27 range with Utah coming out on top. I expect about 300 in the air and 150-200 on the ground this week from us.

Great summary.

I think it will be a bit lower scoring, given their run D weakness, I suspect we have at least a couple run heavy drives to chew up clock and limit total possessions.

So I’d expect OSU to have couple scores below season average, from that, plus lower success rate given the relative strength of our D vs their last 3 games.

I’m thinking high 20s for them, if we cross 30 we win, would feel comfortable at 35.

If this game turns into a Big 12 style shootout, it plays to their advantage and away from our strength – makes it a toss up, or gives them advantage.

My $0.02

Great summary. From what I can tell on Reddit, OK State fans don’t trust Bowman. They are concerned about the run game and why that hasn’t been more productive. I think the key to the game with be their pass game vs our pass D. Who ever wins that battle wins the game. I think our offense is dynamic enough to score plenty on their defense.

Any of you know of an OK State fan board like this?

What do we know about OSU? Before yesterday not a single damn thing.

The intensity level will be much higher for both teams.

Conference opener (and with 2 of the pre-season favorites) so both teams should come out full throttle.

Only 9 teams have a worse defense than OSU. They can’t stop the run. They can’t stop the pass. They can’t run the ball.

Utah State has a better defense than OSU and Utah State has been torn apart by USC.

We should score 40.

On the other hand, our defense is ranked #20. Their scoring offense is #18.

Can they score 40 on us?

Our scoring offense is ranked #30.

Nothing says they will stop us from scoring 40. Can we stop them?

I think so.

I think we win by 14+.

To be honest, I feel like these are 2 really similar teams. Both led by 20-year coaches that sometimes let their hair go long.

I don’t like OSU because they always say THE OSU. Oh, wait, this is the other one. I’ve followed Big 12 for 16 years since I was in grad school and OSU has always been solid, similar to Utah. Usually in the top third, some years competing for the championship, but usually losing one or two games more than they should.

If this was at Utah, I’d give us the edge. It’s at OSU, so I give them the edge. But really it will come down to who executes better. The fewer mistakes (win the turnover battle) and fewer chunk plays given up (I’m looking at our DBs …) will likely dictate the win. Will this be a shootout or a grind it out? Who can get the run game going enough to keep the other offense off the field (is Ollie dinged up? Can our RBs get good blocking?)? Who can get pressure on the qb? Can special teams (Lohner blocking another FG) make a game-changing play?

This is the game I’ve been looking forward to since the schedule came out. We are favored in the rest of our games with @UCF the next hardest (55% on Massey). OSU is @KSU next week (34% chance of win), so these 2 weeks are make or break for the Pokes. Likely 2 of these 3 will be in the CCG.

I thought best case was we’d be 11-1 with this being the most likely loss. So, hopeful, but realistic that this is going to be a dogfight. Battle of wills.

One thing I know for certain is that Utah has not had to open up their playbook in their first three games much at all. I have not seen many blitz packages from the Utes and our offense has been really vanilla in all three games because it didn’t need much to win those games. I think Utah opens things up quite a bit on Saturday and will look radically different than they have in the first four games, especially on defense. I would look for Utah to dial up a ton of pressure on their QB and really jam the box on running downs. Bowman is not a super mobile QB and I see our ends and safeties having a huge impact one the game by making him run for his life.

Two good teams taking the field in a few days and one of those good teams will walk out a loser. Don’t get too down on our team if we lose a well-fought battle as there is a lot of football still left to play.

Steve Bartle does a comparison of key player recruiting rankings, for what it is worth:

Talent Perspective: Utah Utes vs Oklahoma State Cowboys