Senior safety Ricky Price hits a player during OSU’s victory against Missouri State on Saturday. Many other Cowboy hits weren’t legal: OSU had three personal fouls, three holding calls, four false starts, two pass interference calls and an offsides penalty Saturday for a season-high 13 penalties.
The Cowboys have seen their fair share and are wanting to preventing seeing more.
Rain wasn’t the only thing falling to the field on Saturday.
The officials’ yellow penalty flags were hitting the turf on a steady basis throughout the game as OSU and Missouri State combined for 20 penalties.
The Cowboys were on the receiving end of 13 of those penalties for a total of 130 yards. Put into perspective, Missouri State had 196 yards of total offense, outgaining the Cowboys’ penalties by a mere 66 yards.
Most coaches would be happy to have their defense hold an opponent under 200 yards of offense, but no coach wants to see his team give up 130 yards in penalties.
Coach Mike Gundy said five of the penalties that concerned him were from the starters. The rest came against the backups, who received significant playing time once the game was well in hand.
Gundy said the penalties should not have been as big of a problem as they were for the backups, but that it is a problem that can be fixed.
“It frustrated me because we should be far enough along, even with our young guys,” Gundy said. “But I think the majority of those [penalties] were with guys that hadn’t played, and they’re a little nervous.
“Even though you’re way ahead in the game, for them it’s important. They’re in there for the first time and we need them to clean that up. We need to execute better no matter who it is in the game.”
Quarterback Zac Robinson said playing for the first time can be overwhelming, which he said might have caused the younger players to have trouble with penalties.
“For a lot of guys, it was their first time in there or significant time playing,” Robinson said. “Stuff moves a lot faster in the game, so those guys’ heads were spinning a little bit, I’m sure, the first few plays, and I think that’s why it happened.”
Co-offensive coordinator Trooper Taylor said the coaches broke down the game film and pointed out the mistakes to the entire team. He called the penalties wasted plays and said that if the team continues to commit penalties against better teams, it will lose.
Taylor said the experience is benefitial to the younger players and the coaches will be expecting better play from them when they get playing time again.
“What we try to tell them is you gotta have poise,” Taylor said. “You have to be calm, got to play inside yourself, and there’s no better teacher than experience, and now [that] they’ve got the experience, we expect better from them.”
The Cowboys have 26 penalties for 247 yards in three games this season. Robinson said the team should be able to clean up on the penalties in practice before the first Big 12 game against Texas A&M.
The Cowboys have a bye-week this week and take on Troy the week after. Then the team will have one more week of practice before hosting Texas A&M.
Linebacker Andre Sexton said although the Missouri State contest wasn’t close, the Cowboys need to work on eliminating penalties before they start playing better opponents.
“We got to work on the penalties ‘cause that can really hurt you,” Sexton said. “In this game, we were playing so good that it didn’t really affect us, but later on down the road we need to work on those little things.”
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