Third Quarter Woes Keeping Gundy (Probably Others) Up at Night

STILLWATER – It has been one of the anomalies of the 2021 season. Not exactly, as fabulous as the Oklahoma State defense grabbing the proverbial “bull by the horns” and leading the way on the field early this season with their stellar play, but while Oklahoma State has been a different type of offensive team with more reliance on the running attack. After the first two games there was the discovery of workhorse Jaylen Warren and how dominant he could be. His streak of 100-yard plus games did come to an end in Saturday’s first loss of the season, 24-21 at Iowa State. Quarterback Spencer Sanders picked up the offense along with slot receiver Brennan Presley. Sanders threw for three touchdowns, two of those to Presley.

The anomaly on offense has been that none of Warren’s rushing touchdowns have been in the third quarter. Sanders hasn’t thrown for a third quarter touchdown. The Cowboys haven’t scored a third quarter touchdown. The only points in the third quarter for the Cowboys this season were the three from the Tanner Brown field goal at Texas.

"I'm going to start to pass a buck around for third quarter suggestions,” head coach Mike Gundy deadpanned at his weekly news conference on Monday. “And I say that kind of jokingly, but not really, from the standpoint we've been so good in the third quarter. I mean, Dave (radio play-by-play voice-Hunziker) is an analytics guy, I don't know how many years they've had analytics, but in years past in the third quarter we've been pretty good.”

Gundy is right about that, and in the spirit of analytics here are the score-by-quarter numbers for the last decade plus going all the way back to the Cowboys 2011 Big 12 Championship season with Brandon Weeden, Justin Blackmon, and company.

To be fair, the third quarter hasn’t been the best one over the year, but it certainly hasn’t been the struggle that it has this season.

“And that's what's keeping me up at night. Losing this game didn't keep me up,” Gundy explained to the media. “I was up all night, but I was up because of the third quarter. We've lost games in the past where we turn the ball over four times, so we didn't give ourselves a chance. Well, that didn't happen in this game. They played well enough to beat us. So, third quarter offensively is what I'm looking for."

Like all college football teams, halftime locker rooms are a busy place, but over the years dating back to 2011 when Gundy and staff may have made one of their best halftime adjustments at Texas A&M, they’ve done a good job with halftime adjustments. In that game at College Station, the Cowboys were down 20-3 and came out firing in the third quarter and wore the No. 8 Aggies down 30-29.

The general way halftimes go is while players take a seat and get something to drink, medical treatment, if needed, the coaches meet. Special teams get together right away. The offensive and defensive coaching staffs find a place to meet for several minutes. After they meet, then they take adjustments to their players. Gundy will address the team after those adjustments are passed on. By then it is time to go back out for the second half.

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Halftime ends with Gundy addressing the team.

"At halftime we all get to make adjustments. Traditionally here, we've been really good in the third quarter,” Gundy said. “Our concepts are the same; I went over that a few weeks ago. We're not changing anything. We just haven't been able to get that production, and we need to find a way to get that. It's not an easy solution or we would've already fixed it. We look at a lot of things and try to back track on what we can put into place to make it better in Saturday's night's game."

Until that third quarter production improves, Gundy is certain that he will be missing sleep.

“When I tell you guys that I don't sleep at night that means I wake up at 2:08, 3:50 something, four something and then at 5:20 I just give up and get up,” he said. “The only one that likes it is my dog. She gets to curl up next to me, and I pet on her a little bit in the middle of the night. I don't want to overplay it and say it's a big, big deal, but it bothers me because I think it's important for coaches to go in at halftime, use their resources, and their knowledge and their experience; and come up with a plan in six to eight minutes and then spend four minutes getting it to the players and then go back out and make it work. I think that's our responsibility as coaches. We have to get the players to produce.”

This could be a good week to get that done. Kansas reversed a trend on Saturday when they led Oklahoma 10-0 at the half and they pressed the unbeaten Sooners to the end of the game. Until that game, many Big 12 teams have improved their offensive production against Kansas. Baylor won 45-7. Iowa State cranked up the offense 59-7 and Texas Tech did the same 41-14. That ended with Oklahoma, so it can now become a gauge for Oklahoma State, especially in the third quarter.