Spring Football Notebook: Practice No. 1 a Success, Young Guys Perform Well, Injury Update

STILLWATER – Spring football is finally upon us as Oklahoma State hosted the first of 15 practices on a cold and rainy Tuesday afternoon.

The Cowboys are coming off one of the best seasons in program history, a 12-2 overall record, which included wins over Baylor, Oklahoma and Texas, and was capped with a 37-35 Fiesta Bowl win over Notre Dame.

This a bit of a different looking team from last year as several guys have either graduated, entered the NFL Draft process or transferred, but Mike Gundy and Co. return a lot of talent on both sides of the ball, albeit some of it is unproven.

Speaking of the NFL and the Draft, a couple of former OSU wide receivers were on the sidelines this afternoon: Baltimore Raven Tylan Wallace and star of last year’s season, Tay Martin.

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The head coach met with the media prior to practice No. 1 on Tuesday and broke down the off-season and what he expects from his team over the next month.

“It’s finally here for us, we’re back at it a week later,” Mike Gundy said of spring football. “In most cases, we practice before [spring] break, but we had an additional week, so we chose to spend that time in off-season in the weight room in conditioning. It worked out really well for us. I feel like our team is in the best condition that we’ve ever been in at this time of the year. We’ve had a great off-season, so we’re excited about getting started. Looking forward to the next 15 practices."

Injury update

A couple of important health notes about the team this spring, all players who should be back before fall camp. Charlie Dickey is down four offensive linemen for the duration of the spring: Hunter Woodard, Preston Wilson, Joe Michalski and Silas Barr, all of which had scopes during the offseason to repair various injuries.

"We’ll be fine up front,” said coach Gundy We don’t have a lot of depth right now because we’ve got a couple guys that would be, well one guy that would be in the two-deep, that left in the portal. We have a few leave, but one would be in the two-deep. Then we had two or three guys that had minor scopes, so they won’t be in spring ball. That’s why we’re down a few guys, there’s like three of them. Once those guys come back, couple months and get going and they train on their own in June, they’ll be fine because they are experienced. Those guys have had a lot of reps in the last 18 months. More than we’ve ever had here. They’ve had enough work to where they should feel good and understand our system and be able to play at a high level."

Brock Martin is out with a lower leg injury on his right leg, which is in a cast. It’s an injury from last season which they took care of during the off-season. Both Green twins are also out with various injuries.

Both Langston Anderson and Braydon Johnson were out on the field this afternoon and looked good, with Anderson making some plays. Johnson sat nearly all of the 2021-22 season due to a health issue, while Langston missed due to a broken foot in warmups of the season opener.

Both Trace Ford and Collin Clay were back out on the field and going full speed in drills. Having Ford back alongside Collin Oliver, Brock Martin, Tyler Lacy and Kody Walterscheid is certainly a scary proposition for opposing quarterbacks and having Clay back helps strengthen the depth at DL.

However, even with what appears to be depth issues this spring, Gundy said they’re going to get physical and try to get as many reps for the guys as possible.

"Well, we’re gonna practice physical,” said coach Gundy. “We just won’t be as physical with our threes and we have been. We’ve had that luxury since 2020. That’s what COVID taught me, right or wrong, is to make sure that everybody got equal number of reps for the most part. We carried that through. We have it set up this way this spring, but we don’t have the numbers on the offensive line. We’ll have to be delicate with our twos to keep them healthy and get them some reps with the threes at the skill positions. We do have those numbers on the defense. We’re really deep on that side of the ball, which is what I would prefer in most cases because we play two units. But we’re gonna practice physical. We’re gonna play hard."

Younger players looked good

Both Ollie Gordon and Talyn Shettron looked good in their first appearances on offseason as Gordon scored on an 11-yard run in teams, while Shettron hauled in a scored.

Brother to Talyn, cowboy back/jumbo receiver Tabry Shettron also looked solid out on the field during drills and team work.

Redshirt freshman running back Jaden Nixon looked solid as he a good day running the ball. I’m looking forward to seeing how the running back room shakes out with the departure of Jaylen Warren.

"Yeah, it'll be important,” said Gundy of the running back room. “You know, we'd like to play with three guys and truthfully the key will be to keep them healthy this spring. They need live reps, they need to get in there, they need to get hit. We need to see if they can withstand punishment, if they can hold onto the ball, what their endurance level is. So that's a very important position this spring."

Unofficial visitor on campus

The Cowboys also hosted an unofficial visitor today as well: Trason Hunt, a 6-6, 270-pound offensive lineman out of Bentonville, AR in the 2024 class.