Big 12 Twitter-bag Volume 3

The 2015 Big 12 season is over and it did not end as I had expected. Before the season my guess was that OSU would be the main challenger to TCU and Baylor thanks to a passing game built around Mason Rudolph and the versatility afforded by Cowboys' TE personnel.

They might have under-utilized their TEs but still got a lot out of Rudolph and a deep WR corps. However, while they were perfectly positioned to take down Baylor and TCU and win the Big 12, they were stopped by their Bedlam rivals who proved to be better situated to steal the league crown from Briles.

We'll talk about how OU won the wild, wild west in another post this week but for now, let's do hit some Twitter-bag questions.

@Ian_A_Boyd Hypothetical: If you injected a league average QB (Rudolph?) into next year's Texas and WVU, who's the better team?

— Travis Roeder (@Travis_Roeder) November 29, 2015

The question of what a "league average" QB in the Big 12 looks like is maybe a more interesting one than what that would do for Texas or West Virginia. I'd say it probably looks like Skyler Howard, who happens to be returning next season.

If you could put Skyler Howard on either Texas' team or West Virginia's which team would be better? With their current offensive staffs you'd have to say the Mountaineers, but I'd argue that the Longhorns actually have slightly better offensive personnel with the following freshmen all coming back next year: Deep threat WR John Burt, thundering RB Chris Warren, pulling guard extraordinaire Patrick Vahe, and future 1st round pick LT Connor Williams.

@Ian_A_Boyd With OU now the only team w/ a spot already secured in the playoff, do B12 presidents feel validated for standing pat?

— Abram Orlansky (@orlansky_40AS) November 29, 2015

They probably do, but it would have been very interesting to see if one-loss Baylor, TCU, or Oklahoma State would have got in ahead of a team like Notre Dame or Stanford who also had one loss. I don't think anyone had any serious doubts about whether the Big 12's lack of a championship game or overall pedigree was going to hurt Texas or Oklahoma in a beauty contest.

@Ian_A_Boyd first Big 12 coordinator that will get a HC job this year, if any

— Colin Heinrich (@Colin_Heinrich) November 29, 2015

Are we counting Mark Mangino? He might get some crap job at a D2 school this offseason. I'll say Doug Meacham, who might already have locked up the job at UNT, heaven help him. Lincoln Riley and Kendall Briles are another pair of names that are likely to be looking for similar opportunities in coming seasons.

Also on this note, if A&M is axing Jake Spavital then I'm betting he lands a job with a Big 12 program this offseason. West Virginia would make a lot of sense, where Holgorsen is currently in charge of coaching QBs.

@Ian_A_Boyd Kansas

— Da'Patrick Gitty (@PatGitty) November 29, 2015

Kansas successfully went defeated in 2015!

I ended up breaking my rule and watching a single Kansas football game (against Texas), although I didn't even watch it live. I have two things to say about Kansas:

1. I'm not terribly impressed with Clint Bowen, I think some of his defensive plans venture towards being unsound

2. Ryan Willis is a better QB than anyone at Texas. He's probably going to end up helping them to be pretty solid when they actually have a real OL and some skill players around him. Some of their players this year would have struggled to earn a starting spot at a 6A Texas high school.

@Ian_A_Boyd Who are the best, worst match-ups for Oklahoma in the playoff field?

— Erik Valdez (@EvilErikV) November 30, 2015

Well, it appears that the likeliest playoff outcome is Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma, and then the winner of Iowa vs Michigan State.

Because their OL is not dominant and much of their offensive firepower comes from the abilities of Samaje Perine and Baker Mayfield to make stuff happen, a team with a strong DL and comparable athletes in the defensive backfield could cause the Sooners some major problems.

I'd say every defense listed above, save for maybe Iowa, matches that profile.

The Sooner defense has really toughened up this year and are playing at a pretty high level that shouldn't excite any opponents that would have to face them. I tend to think the power-based teams like Alabama and Michigan State would be most concerning simply because being spread out isn't a great fear of OU's but their DE's and ILB's may not shine as bright if forced to stand their ground in the trenches with a downhill rushing attack.

Right now I definitely wouldn't have OU as a favorite heading into this thing but if the field is shaken up, who knows?

Alright, final question:

@Ian_A_Boyd as you see it today, rank the best teams in the conference (based on team strength, not record)

— Jeff Wittekiend (@JWittekiend) November 29, 2015

So these are power rankings of which teams that I would favor to win the most games if the season played out in a neutral field tournament in which no one could incur any more injuries.

1. Oklahoma

The Sooners have the best defense in the league and an offense that can match points with anyone in the league.

2. TCU

Patterson's ability to field competent defenses no matter the situation really shined through this season and with Boykin back this is one of the better offenses in the league. Perhaps the best.

3. Baylor

I'd be curious to see if Chris Johnson could repeat his magic against the Cowboys in another go round where the 'Pokes would be prepared for him but I just can't put them behind OSU after they took them down in Stillwater. The Bear defense was pretty decent this year, thanks largely to Andrew Billings.

4. Oklahoma State

Glenn Spencer is starting to lose some of his luster in my eyes with a 2nd consecutive unit that you simply couldn't trust to stop the league's better offenses. I wonder if this team is capable of being who they were back in 2011-2013 without a Justin Gilbert on the roster.

Spencer started to move the team away from Bill Young's emphasis on staying really sound and simple and added more disguise and complexity and the results just haven't been there for the 'Pokes. I'll give him one more year with what will be a pretty veteran group in 2016.

5. West Virginia

The Mountaineers were very, very close to Baylor and OSU by the end of the year. Look out for this team next year because they have a lot of talented young WRs that will be coming back next year including Jovon Durante, Shelton Gibson, and converted QB David Sills who may end up being a real stud at outside WR.

6. Texas Tech

Perhaps the league's most explosive offense paired with one of the very worst run defenses I've ever watched in my entire life. David Gibbs is basically out to prove right now that he can foster a defensive culture that can produce physical, hard-nosed units under the auspices of Kliff Kingsbury. If he can't, I wonder who (that Tech could convinced to come to Lubbock) could? Paul Rhoads?

7. Kansas State

The Wildcats were pretty poor this season, but they simply don't fall victim to circumstances in the same way that other Big 12 teams do. They'll play anyone but the best teams tough. I'm expecting this team to make a big leap next year with a roster that will see a ton of quality players back from injury and also have much better options at QB.

8. Texas

Decent at home, awful on the road, perhaps the most physical team in the league but also one of the least competent. I know Iowa State blistered them in Ames but Texas is really young and has a much higher beta than the Cyclones. You never seriously entertained the possibility that Iowa State would beat a top team but with Texas anything between a blowout and a close agonizing loss was pretty likely.

9. Iowa State

This is really a pretty poor team. Their defense just wasn't much to write home about and the offense struggled mightily considering that they had some pretty nice pieces to work with. To me their season can be wrapped up by saying "Rhoads desperation moves to hire Mark Mangino and convert to the 3-4 defense failed to move the needle."

I'll be very curious to see what Matt Campbell brings to this team and I suspect that they've made a great hire.

10. Kansas

In the year 2015 the Kansas Jayhawks went defeated. My guess is that they win some games in 2016 but finish at the bottom once more.

Derrick Kindred vs K.D. Cannon: The key to TCU vs Baylor?

Read more on how Kindred has held the TCU defense together this year and how his face-off with K.D. Cannon could determine that game.

What'd I say about Cardale Jones?

At SB Nation I broke down Sparty's victory over the Buckeyes, namely how they stuffed the normally potent Ohio State offense.

From the beginning of the season I've been with team Cardale Jones, often by my lonesome, for the simple reason that a QB who's proficient throwing the football has more to offer a feature back like Ezekiel Elliot than a QB who's just another running back.

Against Michigan State J.T. Barrett was just another running back, and running backs were getting stuffed that night by the Spartan front.

Three tips for Paul Rhoads' successor

What a week in the Big 12!

In my estimation the league was heading for a Big 12 championship game in Stillwater next Saturday between Oklahoma and the 'Pokes, but Baylor had other ideas as they ripped apart the Cowboy defense. We'll talk more about that in the week.

Glenn Spencer was known for producing good, sound defenses under Bill Young as the OSU linebacker coach and he turned the fantastic upperclassmen he inherited in 2013 into a fantastic defense. But since then, OSU just hasn't looked as good on D and you wonder if Mike Gundy will be looking around this offseason for a replacement.

One obvious option would be Paul Rhoads, who was just fired from Iowa State.

As for the Cyclones, I've got a few tips for Rhoad's successor that I think will help spare him from also enduring repeated losing seasons until he's unceremoniously dumped.

Tip 1: Don't hire a complete jerk to be your offensive coordinator

When Iowa State blew their game against Kansas State, who I suspect will also soon begin a search for a new head coach (probably with the assistance of the current head coach), Mark Mangino taunted the program with a tweet.

You might recall that I was skeptical in this space of Rhoads firing Mangino, even when the result was a crushing 23-0 win over Texas and solid offensive showing from replacement Joel Lanning. I just knew Mangino knew more about QB development than Paul Rhoads and was also less worried about trying to save his own job like Rhoads was.

Sure enough, Lanning has been iffy when not scrambling or running, and the Cyclones have fallen apart since their big win over Texas.

But while Mangino had the Cyclone OL playing better than I've seen them in some time while trying to rebuild their passing game, he's just a jerk. Plain and simple. Rhoads entrusted him the role of trying to preserve his job and it's no surprise that it didn't work out for anyone.

I wouldn't hire either of them to be a head coach and I'd think long and hard before hiring Mangino at all, even though he's a fantastic, detail-oriented coordinator. I would be interested to hire Rhoads as a DC and would be curious to see what he could do with better players.

I bet he could be an option at KSU or OSU within the Big 12, and a dozen other spots outside the league.

Tip 2: Don't try to compete with the 2/3 stars from California and Florida that no one else in the country wanted

Recruiting is dictated FAR more by staff connections than the average fan realizes. It's more than plain that Rhoads and his staff relied on connections to the big programs in California and Florida (and Texas somewhat) to guide them to players. From there, they tried to build them through a good S&C program and effective coaching into a unit that could take down more talented teams.

There were just a few problems with that strategy. First of all, the Florida and Cali kids from the big high schools that every other college program knows about aren't going to make Iowa State their top choice. The Cyclones were the last to a very crowded bowl every year and that meant that when they found talented kids they were often ones with baggage that would later get them kicked out of school anyways.

Secondly, that talent pool of well-coached high schoolers wasn't a good one to execute the plan of building up players once they arrived on campus. Rhoads needed a talent pool of players with much more upside.

Finally, they totally ignored the advantage of recruiting in a small mid-western state like Iowa. Namely, there are tons of kids all around that just need a closer look and maybe a greyshirt and they could be built up into much, much better players than anyone would expect. Iowa State in the Paul Rhoads era didn't have nearly enough local kids that turned out to be excellent because he wasn't looking locally.

The local Iowa Hawkeyes represent a better model for the next coach, as does Kansas State. Beef up that walk-on program, take the hard working local kids and milk them for all their worth, and find dog bowls that aren't crowded with much bigger breeds.

Tip 3: Don't give up on building from the trenches

As the only real midwestern program in the Big 12, unless you count Kansas, the Cyclones should look to build from the inside out with tough, physical DLs and OLs. We've seen flashes of this working in the Paul Rhoads era. The current team has a good, physical interior OL and a RB that keeps his legs churning and isn't fun to tackle.

They've also fielded some stout fronts in the past, especially when they had guys like Stephen Ruempolhamer or Jake McDonough at nose tackle and guys like Jake Knott or AJ Klein at inside linebacker. Those are the kinds of players that are available locally, so the next head coach should probably aim to build around strategies that involve stout, hard-nosed players up front on both sides of the ball.

They could also hire Bob Stitt, who seems to be capable of making a dynamic Air Raid team just about anywhere in the country, but my choice would be North Dakota State's Chris Klieman, who fields a team better than Iowa State just about every year with players that Rhoads has ignored.

Good luck, Cyclones.

DeForest Buckner, OU, and the highly prized 4i-technique DE

I wrote a post today for Football Study Hall on the 4i-technique strongside DE you can read here. The upshot is that big SDEs that can battle with offensive tackles and vacillate between setting the edge and filling interior gaps are becoming prized tools in anti-spread, odd fronts.

Lots of Big 12 teams are after kids like this, yet a likely future stud like Andrew Fitzgerald is still not fully recognized for his potential value in the role. OU has somewhat miscast Charles Walker in this role, and he's doing real work there despite being more of a natural 3-technique. Texas will use Hassan Ridgeway in that role and the impact he's capable of is probably blunted somewhat as a result.

The guy who has some lateral quickness and 6'4" or better length is the ideal.

The game is always changing and it's hard to keep up if you don't watch lots of film of lots of different teams, which is why you read this site, no?

Previewing OSU-Baylor and OU-TCU

The state of Oklahoma is about to host two major football games that could have a big impact on a Big 12 championship race that is starting to look like it might come down to the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State season finale in Stillwater.

Baylor and TCU look to be out of the running due to injuries, which have now claimed Seth Russell and Josh Doctson, two of the better offensive skill players in the entire league. But of course, both of those teams are still more than capable of playing spoiler to the playoff hopes of the Oklahomans.

The rest of the Big 12 is a morass of struggling teams with major questions marks about how long their coaches are going to stick around. I'm very curious to see what happens at Kansas State, for instance, and Mangino is now available again while Iowa State will presumably be on the market for a new O.C.

But for now, every team in the Big 12 that really matters is playing on Saturday night in one of these two games.

Sizing up Baylor at Oklahoma St.

The biggest question here is whether or not Jarrett Stidham is healthy and ready to go. Now I tend to think he'll be fine, but no doubt that a back injury in the days after the injury is a difficult thing to work through and Baylor's young QB really needs reps.

If Chris Johnson is the man at QB for Baylor against Oklahoma State than this game is probably already over.

The match-up between Oklahoma State's offense and Baylor's defense is probably the most interesting aspect of this game. Mason Rudolph got his career off to a great start when he nearly took down Baylor a year ago in Waco and now he comes into this game looking to protect home field and an undefeated record.

Last year he did a lot of damage against the Bears throwing 7 routes to David Glidden matched up on Terrell Burt:

You'll note this is the same weakness that Oklahoma picked on a week ago with Sterling Shephard, although they tended to use snag rather than this "bash" concept (also known as 7-ins).

OSU also has outside receivers like James Washington that can present problems for the Baylor cornerbacks when they're matched up in isolation. Take this post-dig route combination from last year, for instance:

They get twin receivers to the boundary, which forces Baylor to play their cover safety over the boundary slot or risk losing the boundary linebacker against the run. However, the linebackers are sucked in by the play-action, the cover safety is sucked in to stop the dig route, and that leaves the corner on an island against the post route by Washington.

So suffice to say, the Cowboys are very capable of attacking the same coverage weaknesses that Oklahoma ruthlessly exploited last Saturday in Waco.

The big questions are the run game, whether the Bears will be able to handle the pass more conservatively without getting punished by the OSU ground game, and if the Bears can get a pass-rush from their DL.

The Cowboys are one of the few good offenses in history that can't run the ball worth a lick (108th in rushing S&P, 105th on standard downs) and it's because they do work on passing downs (8th in the nation!).

Since the Bears are wretched on passing downs I expect that OSU will score some points in this one.

On the flip side, the 'Pokes have a mediocre run defense but are excellent on passing downs thanks to their numerous packages and the DE tandem of Jimmy Bean and Emmanuel Ogbah who have combined for 16 sacks on the year so far.

Their ability to get pressure with four and match personnel with Baylor makes me think this game could get ugly for Baylor nation. Look for some more cover 2 brackets on Coleman, including plenty of tampa-2 on passing downs, and for the Bears to continue to pound away with the run game in response. That might work better this week than against the Sooner front but I again foresee it failing to produce enough points to keep up.

Sizing up Oklahoma at TCU

Oklahoma is the flavor of the week right now after slowing down Baylor's offense and another week of the Baker Mayfield-improv hour getting great results. It's worth noting that the Sooners' current five game winning streak came against four creampuffs and a Baylor team that might have been overrated and was adjusting to life without their starting QB.

Of course, TCU is dealing with injuries to what might be the three most important players on offense with Trevone Boykin (ankle), Joey Hunt (something), and Doctson (wrist, done). It's hard to see the Frogs taking down the Sooners without a healthy, running Boykin.

The uncertainty around Boykin is probably why Vegas hasn't given odds on this game.

Here's something we do know though: there is quite a bit of optimism from the Sooner side about running the ball on TCU and I'm not sure this optimism is entirely well placed.

First of all, OU has a finesse approach to blocking with a heavy reliance on stretch plays and Samaje Perine bringing the physicality when he can square up his shoulders and run through people. That latter element should be concerning to TCU, but the finesse approach to blocking won't scare the Frogs' defensive front.

Part of the reason TCU has survived this season on defense in the midst of all their injuries, besides the fact that Patterson is a patchwork-quilt maker, is the play of their DL. They aren't getting a ton of pressure on the QB with their base rush but they are stout against the run and have several good DTs between Davion Pierson, Chris Bradley, Aaron Curry, and Tevin Lawson.

What's more, their safeties can run and tackle and they play with great leverage as a team. You figure Perine probably bulldozes his way to a solid game regardless but the overall OU run game may not find much success or explosive plays against this group.

Perhaps the bigger concern is covering Sterling Shephard, as the TCU secondary basically consists of three traditional safeties, an up and coming corner (Nick Orr), and an older more suspect corner (Corry O'Meally). OU should be able to force TCU to roll some coverage over to Shephard and then attack the resulting soft spots with the run game or other receivers.

Gary Patterson is going to make it a point to try and confuse Mayfield and hide where the Frog weaknesses are and it's going to take a savvy, veteran performance from the Sooner QB to see through it all and get after them.

But without Boykin it's hard to see TCU scoring enough to require too much. For that reason, an OU victory seems fairly likely in this one.

The next OC at Texas

I keep having to write this column, it'd be nice to have some stability in Austin again. Here's a look at what Charlie needs to look for (and who he might look at) to bring some leadership and vision to the Texas offense.