I know most of us would start with a big time QB but several NFL quality QB's in recent years have not won a Big 12 championship including Heisman winner RG 3 and high draft choice Geno Smith. Not surprisingly, it takes defense along with a high powered offense to win in the pass happy Big 12.
I am going to throw out some numbers which we can I hope we can use to decide if OSU has the fire power to be in the Big 12 race this fall. I only went back as far as 2011 because that is the year we went to the round robin play so every team can be evaluated against the same competition. Here are the results:
2011 Big 12 champ: OSU Scoring offense 48.3 PPG Rank in conference: 1
Scoring defense 25.4 PPG Rank in conference: 1
2012 Big 12 champ: uo Scoring offense 41.9 PPG Rank in conference: 1
Scoring defense 26.7 PPG Rank in conference: 2
KSU Scoring offense 38.9 PPG Rank in conference: 4
Scoring defense 23.3 PPG Rank in conference: 1
2013 Big 12 champ: BU Scoring offense 47.8 PPG Rank in conference: 1
Scoring defense 25.7 PPG Rank in conference: 5
2014 Big 12 champ TCU Scoring offense 46.5 PPG Rank in conference: 2
Scoring defense 20.3 PPG Rank in conference: 1
BU Scoring offense 48.2 PPG Rank in conference: 1
Scoring defense 24.2 PPG Rank in conference: 3
Probably even more important is the scoring differential. The Big 12 champs average outscoring their conference opponents by at least 2 TD's and sometime 3TD's. So how does OSU stack up this year? Well, here is what we have to improve upon. Last year we only averaged 27.6 PPG, good for 7th in the Big 12 and our defense was just as disgusting, giving up 32 PPG. That is the worst in the Gundy era. Yep, worse than the Bedford years, the Beckman years, and the Young years. It was the most points given up by a Gundy coached team in his 10 year tenure.
So, it was not just the offense that hurt us last year, although the poor offense also contributed to TO's and poor field position for the defense.
So if we want to compete for a championship this year(based on 4 years of historical data), we need to improve our offensive production about 13 to 14 PPG at least while dropping our defensive points allowed by about 7 points. Even accomplishing this may not be enough. Baylor returns 9 offensive starters after averaging 48 PPG last year. There is a good chance they can repeat that performance. TCU returns 10 offensive starters after scoring 46 PPG last year. WOW!!! That is a lot of ground to make up.
I hope this brings some lively discussion over the next few days and maybe we can re-visit this topic again after the spring game.
Fire away.
This post was edited on 4/5 10:01 PM by Cowboy76
I am going to throw out some numbers which we can I hope we can use to decide if OSU has the fire power to be in the Big 12 race this fall. I only went back as far as 2011 because that is the year we went to the round robin play so every team can be evaluated against the same competition. Here are the results:
2011 Big 12 champ: OSU Scoring offense 48.3 PPG Rank in conference: 1
Scoring defense 25.4 PPG Rank in conference: 1
2012 Big 12 champ: uo Scoring offense 41.9 PPG Rank in conference: 1
Scoring defense 26.7 PPG Rank in conference: 2
KSU Scoring offense 38.9 PPG Rank in conference: 4
Scoring defense 23.3 PPG Rank in conference: 1
2013 Big 12 champ: BU Scoring offense 47.8 PPG Rank in conference: 1
Scoring defense 25.7 PPG Rank in conference: 5
2014 Big 12 champ TCU Scoring offense 46.5 PPG Rank in conference: 2
Scoring defense 20.3 PPG Rank in conference: 1
BU Scoring offense 48.2 PPG Rank in conference: 1
Scoring defense 24.2 PPG Rank in conference: 3
Probably even more important is the scoring differential. The Big 12 champs average outscoring their conference opponents by at least 2 TD's and sometime 3TD's. So how does OSU stack up this year? Well, here is what we have to improve upon. Last year we only averaged 27.6 PPG, good for 7th in the Big 12 and our defense was just as disgusting, giving up 32 PPG. That is the worst in the Gundy era. Yep, worse than the Bedford years, the Beckman years, and the Young years. It was the most points given up by a Gundy coached team in his 10 year tenure.
So, it was not just the offense that hurt us last year, although the poor offense also contributed to TO's and poor field position for the defense.
So if we want to compete for a championship this year(based on 4 years of historical data), we need to improve our offensive production about 13 to 14 PPG at least while dropping our defensive points allowed by about 7 points. Even accomplishing this may not be enough. Baylor returns 9 offensive starters after averaging 48 PPG last year. There is a good chance they can repeat that performance. TCU returns 10 offensive starters after scoring 46 PPG last year. WOW!!! That is a lot of ground to make up.
I hope this brings some lively discussion over the next few days and maybe we can re-visit this topic again after the spring game.
Fire away.
This post was edited on 4/5 10:01 PM by Cowboy76
