STILLWATER - Oklahoma State’s defense is trying to shake off its roughest outing of the season, and the numbers from last week make the task pretty clear.
The Cowboys allowed a season-worst 8.1 yards per play against Iowa State, a sharp drop after giving up 6.4 to Colorado and 6.9 to Houston in the previous weeks. Through their first three games against Power Four opponents, Oklahoma State had kept every one of those teams at 5.4 yards per play or fewer.
Coach Eric Morris pointed to the basics when asked what needs to change.
“We’ve got to do a lot of the simple things better,” coach Eric Morris said. “We’ve got to tackle better in space, we’ve got to get more hands on balls.
We had two on the ground that we punched out, and both of them go right back to ‘em. Just a bunch of stuff like that to be able to maximize some of those things and create some havoc.”
The Cowboys also struggled to get off the field. They managed a 3-and-out or turnover on just 21% of Iowa State’s possessions, which was their second-worst rate against a Power Four opponent.
Big plays were another problem. Oklahoma State allowed 15 plays of at least 15 yards through the air or 10 yards on the ground, and those snaps made up 21% of Iowa State’s offense. Both numbers were season highs, topping the 12 big plays the Cowboys gave up at Houston, which had accounted for 17% of the Cougars’ plays.
Linebacker Isaiah Chisom said the key is keeping one bad snap from turning into a longer stretch of trouble.
“I would just say like you never want to let a bad play start to spiral,” linebacker Isaiah Chisom said. “And you know after you know one or two missed tackles, you can start to see stuff like that start to spiral.
“And you just want to be able to put that behind you and move on to the next play, so that you know we can keep on stacking on you know the pick, and we can keep forcing those type of turnovers.”
Chisom also said he didn’t think the missed tackling was necessarily worse than usual, and the PFF numbers mostly support that view. Oklahoma State missed 16.7% of its tackles against Iowa State, its worst mark since missing 16.8% at West Virginia. Outside of UCF and, somewhat surprisingly, Houston, the Cowboys have missed at least 14.6% of their tackles in every game this season.
Asked whether defenders have to resist overthinking after a miss, Chisom said it can happen.
“Sometimes you are going to miss, and that’s just a part of the game, and you just have to be able to put that behind you,” Chisom said.
Chisom was one of two Cowboys, along with linebacker Tate Romney, to miss two tackles against Iowa State. Even so, he remains one of the team’s most reliable tacklers.
PFF has Chisom with only four missed tackles on the season, a 9.1% miss rate. Among Oklahoma State defenders with at least 20 tackles, only cornerback Mo Horn at 4.2% and defensive lineman Saadiq Clements at 4.8% have been more accurate.
At the other end of the list, the Cowboys’ worst tacklers among players not ruled out by injury and with at least 20 total tackles are nickel Christian Bodnar at 32%, safety Evan Jackson at 20% and defensive end James Williams at 19%.
Chisom should have a bigger workload this weekend with Romney listed as doubtful on the initial injury report. Romney has the edge in total snaps and tackles this season, with 140 snaps and 21 tackles, but PFF has Chisom just five stops behind Romney’s 22. Ethan Wesloski leads the team with 32 stops, while Williams has 14 and rounds out the top four.
Kansas State will test that group too. The Wildcats have forced 83 missed tackles this season, more than Iowa State’s 78, so Oklahoma State’s reset has to come quickly.
“It’s really just been trying to reset,” Chisom said, referring to Oklahoma State’s attempt to bounce back this week. “Like understanding that we have the players to make the right plays and make those really big plays, and that’s what we just got to get back to, just playing fast and trusting what we see.”
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