Hi and thank you! Yes, I am the admin over there–welcome to the Big 12! I am happy to share some thoughts.
To be honest, I am pretty nervous going into this game. I have confidence in our offense and think they will score points, but our defense is pretty boom or bust, and our d line has underperformed so far this year. Combine that with our experienced LB’s being a bit over aggressive and not keeping gap integrity and we have given up a lot of rushing yards this year, mainly when RB’s do utilize cutback lanes. I think y’all are going to have success rushing the football against us and your TE’s will have a good to great day, as we historically seem to struggle covering them and y’all are talented at that position.
On offense, especially since y’all are known to put an extra guy or two in the box, we are going to struggle to run the football. All of our opponents have done this to us up to this point and outside of SDSU who were physically overmatched, we have not been able to overcome this. Our TE/FB run blocking is a step back from last year. Y’all are more talented up front than Tulsa and SDSU, and are likely similar to Arkansas in overall d line talent. With that being said, our O line is an elite pass blocking unit and have not given up a sack in 12 games. I do expect Bowman to have time and open receivers because of that defensive alignment. Bowman, while better this year can be pretty inconsistent, and our WR’s while very talented, had a lot of drops in our first two games. If they connect there will be fireworks, but I am not confident that will happen consistently.
While we had some positive signs on defense against Tulsa, they are not very good, so I’m not sure a ton can be gleaned from that. I know we spent extra time this offseason preparing for y’all, and I am sure y’all did the same for us. I think that will lower the score totals a bit, since there is a lot of tape out there both on Gundy/Dunn’s system and also on Whittingham’s system.
If this was at Rice-Eccles, I would pick y’all to win in a close one, but since this is at Boone Pickens Stadium, I am picking us to win a close one. Similar to y’all, our home field advantage is very strong and I think the heat and humidity is going to play a role. I think this is going to be an absolute slugfest from start to finish and one to give both of our fanbases heartburn and the urge to consume more alcohol.
My pick is 28-24 pokes.
Utah @ 
Oklahoma State 
