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Knee-Jerk Reaction: Oklahoma State 32 Central Arkansas 8

By Kurt Freudenberger

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Unfiltered and somewhat unorganized thoughts immediately following the Oklahoma State football team’s victory against Central Arkansas in their 2015 home opener.

Man.

Another week against a directional school, another disappointing outcome.

Just like last week, we saw the Cowboys come out and lay some eggs offensively, while getting stops on defense, only to get the ball back and fail yet again.

Passes into double coverage. Drops. Runs up the middle.

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Runs up the middle.

Runs up the middle.

If you were yelling at your television screen, you weren’t alone. It just doesn’t make sense. The same play was thwarted numerous times by the Bears. And no, not just by holding the Cowboys to 2 yard gains — UCA was able to tackle Cowboy ball carriers in the back field with regularity, sometimes two plays in a row.

Look, everyone has an opinion about their team. It’s easy to sit back from afar and criticize play calling from the comfort of your couch. But when you see the same results time and time again, against inferior teams, after hearing all spring and fall about how much better this team was going to be in certain areas, about how the offensive line is better, about how Chris Carson is going to do what he wants on the field, and whatever else, you believe it. You get your hopes up.

Well here we are, two games in, and it seems to be a bunch of crap at this point.

Let me remind you about something: Central Arkansas is an FCS team. A pretty bad one actually.

The Cowboys looked like they were playing a decent team. It’s like, you watch them get stuffed on each run and you’re like “Man, that other team has a pretty good run defense I guess.”

No, no they don’t. They are the Central Arkansas Bears, and they don’t have a good run defense. They merely played a team that apparently can’t run or block. Some of their fellow FCS teams in their own conference are going to run the ball better than OSU did on them.

At this point right now, I really don’t care about stats. I know some of them looked good. I know there were some big plays. I know that Rudolph somehow still ended up throwing for over 400 yards, despite some pretty poor decision-making against a bad team. I know that David Glidden had a career night. But you know what? Rudolph should have a 400-yard night against UCA. Glidden should have a big game against a team like this. These are the kinds of games that allow for big performances, ending with seldom-used upperclassmen and young players making some plays on their home turf while the starters sit back and enjoy the front-row seats.

We didn’t even get to see that tonight.

I know a lot of Cowboy faithful are pretty upset after this. They have the right to be. This team isn’t in the forgivable position of being in a rebuilding year, or dealing with key injuries, or whatever else excuses lame performances like this. This is a team that many built up as a darkhorse Big 12 contender, or even College Football Playoff contender. Teams capable of doing such things find ways to run against bad opponents. Teams capable of winning a conference find ways to put away UCA’s by halftime. This team has no excuse.

Oh, and how about those TWO BLOCKED KICKS?

Am I going a little overboard right now? Probably. But I know a lot of you feel the same way right now. We’ll get into a more in-depth analysis over the next day or two, but for now, enjoy this little tidbit:

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