Oklahoma State's Defense vs. Our Offense

Ideal Cowboy reaction to our offense
The biggest wild card in the Georgia vs. Oklahoma State game is the new defensive coordinator for Oklahoma State. It's very difficult for a team situated that close to the fertile Texas recruiting soil to have talent as bad as their stats were last year.

The Oklahoma State defense finished 2006 ranked near the bottom of every major defensive statistical category including:

Rushing Defense -72nd nationally (146.7 yards/game)
Passing Defense - 84th (217 yards / game)
Scoring Defense - 82nd (25.62 points/ game)

The defense was apparently very much a risk taking operation because they did finish in the top 12 nationally in sacks and tackles for loss. In other words, if you got past the line of scrimmage, you probably went a long way.

Better tackling, spacing, teaching and scheming could shave all of those numbers down...especially with more experienced players. Luckily for Georgia, the Cowboys lose much of their defensive front four, and they return most of the players who struggled defensively elsewhere.

The entire fate of this game for the Cowboys rests on their new defensive coordinator's ability to take them from wretched defensively to average or better. Their hope is that their offense is so good that an average defense vs. our wildly inexperienced offensive line and traditionally hands of stone WR corp will win it for them.

Georgia has been forced to study tape from Bowling Green, Ohio State and Oklahoma State in order to get ready for what this defense might bring us. Conversely, they have studied 6 years wort of Mark Richt's offense. My hope is that Bobo's play calling and wrinkles combined with Coach Searels different approaching at OL will offset the film room advantage that Ok State has.

Bottom line:
The Cowboys gave up 30+ points to Houston, Alabama, Kansas, and Texas A&M...among others. None of those guys have the offensive talent that Georgia has. However, you can't expect all our guys to improve in their areas of weakness without also assuming the other guy's will make progress to fill some of his shortcomings as well. It's simply a question of how much will they improve vs. how good is our OL in Game 1?

See Also
-- Cowboys getting familiar with Stafford - Oklahoma City News
-- Their weakness vs. our weakness - Oklahoma City News
-- Player Profile: OSU's linebacker Donovan Woods - Oklahoma City News
-- Lumpkin feeling pressure - ABH
-- Bobo right chemistry for Team - ABH
-- Big Stafford Profile - ABH

Agree. Disagree?

PWD

Tomorrow - their offense vs. our defense.

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