Oklahoma State Football: Grading the Cowboys' Game vs. Iowa State

For the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the loss on Friday night in Ames to Iowa State was the least important loss they’d suffered that week.

Barely 24 hours after a plane crash took the lives of four members of the OSU family, the Cowboys were on the field against an upset-minded Iowa State squad. Many will say the tragedy affected the team, many will argue the contrary.

Either way, time and football will go on. Here is a breakdown of how the Cowboys stacked up on the field.

Passing Game

Brandon Weeden had what would have been a very impressive night for most quarterbacks, tossing three touchdowns and accumulating 476 yards through the air.

However, his three interceptions were key factors in his team’s demise and must be held against him even though they weren’t all his fault.

The receiving corps played well. Justin Blackmon caught 10 balls for 99 yards and a score, while Josh Cooper led all receivers with 13 catches for 128 yards and a touchdown.

The Cowboys played pretty similarly to the way they always do, but they didn’t look very good doing it.

Grade: C+

Running Game

By far the worst performance of the season. Starter Joseph Randle fumbled the ball twice on key drives in Iowa State territory, while backup Jeremy Smith also proved ineffective, running for just 11 yards on eight carries.

As a team, the Cowboys ran the ball just 18 times for 60 yards and zero touchdowns. Not much to say about this performance. It was so bad that no one is even mentioning it.

Grade: D-

Pass Defense

Oklahoma State continued to struggle against a running quarterback. Redshirt freshman Jared Barnett went 31-for-58 for 376 yards and three touchdowns. That yardage is more than double his previous high this season.

The Cowboys faced a young, inexperienced quarterback who isn’t particularly talented and got burned by him. Hopefully this will be a wake-up call.

Oklahoma State did force two interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown. Those help the grade a bit.

Grade: C-

Run Defense

The stats don’t reflect what really happened in this area of the game. Iowa State ran the ball 41 times for 192 yards and two scores.

That’s just an average of 4.7 as a team, but Jared Barnett averaged six yards per carry, echoing the performance of Collin Klein at the beginning of November.

The Cowboys also gave up a long run in the red zone for a score and allowed three different guys to average more than 4.5 yards per carry.

Grade: D

Special Teams

Mixed results in this area. Quinn Sharp did miss a field goal that probably would have won the game, but he also made one early in the game and averaged 47.8 yards per punt.

His longest punt was 55 yards, and three of his four punts were downed inside the 20-yard line. Sharp, despite missing the winning field goal, was a big positive in this game.

The Cowboys’ longest punt return was just six yards, but they did do well on their kick returns, averaging 22.3 yards per return.

Grade: B

Overall

This was the Cowboys’ worst game of the last two years. This was the team that was supposedly made up of resilient road warriors. They looked overmatched at times against a very mediocre Iowa State squad.

Oklahoma State played very poorly, possibly ruining its national title hopes. Luckily, some other top teams lost, so the Pokes are still hanging around.

The only positive could be that they’ll be more ready for Oklahoma on Dec. 3.

Grade: C-