Oklahoma State football rewind: Top players vs. Arizona State, 'Queso' & redshirt tracker

STILLWATER — With a 2-0 record and a fresh spot ranked in the top 10, Oklahoma State is pleased with its start to the season.

But far from comfortable.

The eighth-ranked Cowboys have shown their ability to be dominant with the passing game and potent with the rushing attack, but haven’t had both working fluently at the same time yet. On defense, they’ve flexed the muscle of their defensive line, but shown their youth in the back seven.

With FCS-level Arkansas-Pine Bluff next on the schedule at 6 p.m. Saturday at Boone Pickens Stadium (broadcast on ESPN+), the Pokes have plenty to work on before the season gets serious.

Here’s a look at a few things we learned in the Cowboys’ 34-17 win over Arizona State:

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Top 5 players of the week

1. Running back Dominic Richardson: The 6-foot, 210-pound junior turned in a career performance with his most yards from scrimmage, rushing for 131 and a touchdown, while adding another 44 on five receptions. The 175 scrimmage yards tops his previous best of 169, which all came on the ground against Baylor in 2020. After an opening game in which the rushing attack never gained its footing, the explosion against Arizona State was critical for the offense, which is still likely to be a pass-first unit going forward. But the threat of the run must exist.

2. Defensive end Brock Martin: The super-senior from Oologah might’ve had the most crucial play of the game with the fumble he forced in the second quarter, which led to OSU taking the lead with a touchdown five plays later. But his entire night was impactful. He finished with four tackles, including two for loss and a sack, plus a pair of quarterback hurries. And most impressively, he played 57 of 63 defensive snaps. According to Pro Football Focus, Martin was the highest graded OSU defender to play at least 20 snaps.

3. Defensive lineman Tyler Lacy: If you’re buying future NFL stock, you’re running out of time to get in on Lacy. The 6-foot-4, 285-pound redshirt senior is not only showing he can play more than one position, shuffling between defensive tackle and his regular defensive end spot, but he’s also showing more production. As consistent as he’s been over his career, he’s never had more than four sacks in a season. But he already has two this year.

4. Receiver Bryson Green: On a night when the passing game wasn’t quite as crisp as the week before, Green emerged as the top playmaker among a talented group of receivers. He was second on the team in targets with nine, posting career highs in catches and yards (five for 83) with a touchdown.

5. Offensive lineman Hunter Woodard: The redshirt senior right guard shared time on Saturday simply in an effort to keep him fresh later in the season. But his impact was crucial. Head coach Mike Gundy pointed to the line’s increased physicality in run blocking this week, and Woodard set the pace in that department. He doesn’t always get a lot of attention, but he has been one of OSU’s most consistent blockers since entering the lineup in 2020.

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Hot Queso, cold Queso

For redshirt sophomore offensive lineman Jason Brooks Jr., who bears the nickname Queso, his first season at OSU has already been a blend of very hot and very cold.

In the season opener against Central Michigan, Brooks was OSU’s top-graded offensive lineman by PFF, playing 30 snaps in a backup role behind starter Jake Springfield at right tackle.

Coaches made an effort to get him involved early against Arizona State, rotating him in for Springfield on a couple of first-quarter series. But in eight plays, Brooks was penalized twice — a 10-yarder for holding and a 15-yarder for an unsportsmanlike conduct. He was pulled immediately after both infractions.

Brooks, in his first OSU season after transferring from Vanderbilt, is going to be an important player for this offensive line. He’s most likely the first guy off the bench if a starter gets hurt. So Gundy and Co. know they’re going to need him to be prepared and playing with better focus.

“He’ll be fine, and we need him to continue to get better,” Gundy said. “I’m gonna guess just off the cuff without looking, we need to play him more. But when they lose their emotions, we have a tendency to not put a guy in because you can’t really help us because you can’t think. If you can’t think, it’s really hard to play and that’s anybody on our team.

“He just needs to learn our culture. There’s not a place for that. You don’t get an advantage, and he’ll learn that. He’s a good young man. He works hard. He’ll continue to get more reps. He’ll be just fine, but he just needs to learn the way that we operate around here. It’s not jawing with the guy or pushing and shoving after a play that has zero effect on the game.”

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Self-improvement time

With a below-average FCS opponent on the schedule this Saturday, then an open week before visiting Baylor on Oct. 1, the Cowboys’ key focus over the next several days will be inward.

To aid the process, Gundy is likely to add an additional practice during the open week as compared to what he has scheduled in recent years when the bye came later in the season. With the exception of the COVID season of 2020, when schedules were wildly altered, this year’s open date of Sept. 24 is the earliest OSU has had since the 2014 season.

That year, OSU was off Sept. 20 prior to a Thursday night Big 12 opener against Texas Tech.

Based on the number of new starters on defense this season, the early bye isn’t terrible, giving the players plenty of game experience to learn from before a heavy period of self-reflection.

“We’ve got a lot of sharpening to do,” Gundy said. “We’re a long ways away from being a sharp tool, as you know. So, we need practice.

“We still have youth, we have inexperience. We cut down mistakes considerably, but we still have more mistakes than what we would have on a very productive year per week. So we’ve identified those. We’ve come up with plans we think help us to eliminate those as we move forward. And we need good practices this week.”

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The need for speed

OSU has scored 12 touchdowns this season. Nine of those scoring drives have taken less than two minutes off the clock. That’s more sub-two-minute drives than any FBS team through two games.

The Cowboys said all August that they planned to operate at a much faster pace on a consistent basis. And so far, the numbers show it.

OSU is averaging just shy of 80 offensive snaps per game to start the season.

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Redshirt tracker

Of the four true freshmen who played in the season opener, only one of them — running back Ollie Gordon — appeared in the second game.

Gordon seems to be entrenched in the running back rotation, so it’s unlikely he redshirts at this point. But the others could be candidates. NCAA rules allow a player to play in up to four games and still redshirt.

Cornerback Cameron Epps, and receivers Braylin Presley and Stephon Johnson Jr. each have one game played this season.

On the redshirt front, injuries are another factor to keep an eye on. For instance, true sophomore Blaine Green has a redshirt year available, so if his wrist injury lingers deep into the season, it’s possible he could return and play in the final four games without using a year of eligibility.

Oklahoma State vs. Arkansas-Pine Bluff

KICKOFF: 6 p.m. Saturday at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater (ESPN+)

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State football: Redshirt tracker for Mike Gundy's OSU Cowboys