Oklahoma State University Athletics
Photo by: Bruce Waterfield
Gundy Previews Kansas
November 20, 2017 | Cowboy Football
STILLWATER – Coach Mike Gundy met with media Monday at Boone Pickens Stadium to preview the Cowboys' game against Kansas this Saturday. His comments:
Coach Mike Gundy
On this year's class of seniors:
"It's a special group, from top to bottom. You hear a lot about James Washington and Mason Rudolph and Chad Whitener and Tre Flowers and other certain guys, but the core group of guys that have been here for four or five years have won a lot of games and been very successful. I mentioned this last week, but for me, their contribution to society - for example, in Stillwater we have 400 homeless people and this team pitches in and feeds them every Thanksgiving. We hand out boxes of food and that takes place on Sunday, which was yesterday. I got to work early and my only goal outside of football was to make sure we went over there and handed the food out - I've done it for years. And I forgot about it and I felt terrible. I went in to my assistant, Danielle, and I asked, 'Who was there for me?' … Mason Rudolph. Dillon Stoner. … I mean, I'm just giving an example of the 10 or 12 guys. And Mason is a guy that threw a couple of interceptions and felt like he had an overthrow late. He had a good game, but on his standards, it wasn't as good as he wanted it to be, but he showed up the next day and handed out food to people that are homeless. That's the kind of kids that we have here. That's what makes me the most proud. We've known that they've been a top-15 group in the country the last four or five years, arguably every year."
On the Cowboy Culture:
"When we lose games like that, like I said, I told the guys that I thought we had the best team. All of the credit in the world to (Kansas State), their staff and their players, but my job is to evaluate talent and that's a game I thought we should've won. That goes back to the culture that we've created here. When you go home and you're disappointed - there's certain games where I'm not disappointed. I'm upset because I want the team to win, but I was disappointed after this one. When that happens, you go back to the culture because it gives you something to hang your hat on and that's why you have to do things right all the time. If you don't have that, you'll just be upset if you're only hanging your hat on wins and losses. I know you have to win or you won't have a job - I'm all for that. But these seniors, they're good people that do the right thing and that's most important."
On the team's mindset:
"Sundays are not very fun here when we lose. Everything builds up to in one week of preparation. For me to come in here and say that everyone's happy and passing around lollipops and telling jokes - that's not the way it is. There's some long faces, but that's my job to fix it, and the culture that we have allows them to get themselves ready to play the next game. It's the same way when you have a big win, and sometimes maybe a little worse because they're floating on cloud nine. It's the same thing with winning and losing, when people always tell you how good you are, you don't think you have to go as hard on that rep. But the difficult part when you lose is having to look at yourself in the mirror to see what went wrong. Same thing goes for me and the staff. Nobody really likes me on Sundays, and they darn sure don't like me when we lose, because I have to look at them and say, 'This was not good. We didn't put them in a position for success.' Even with myself - I'm involved on special teams. I worked all week on kick coverage so I had to turn around, look in the mirror and say, 'That didn't work.' That's what we do on Sundays."
On reviewing what went wrong against K-State:
"We lost the turnover battles and we gave up seven points on special teams. We had seven three-and-outs on defense - that's pretty good - but we gave up four huge plays. They used the formula that we've used around here for sometime. You get us three-and-out a few times, but we're eventually going to get you on a big play, and we got a little bit of our own medicine. In the end, what it came down to was the seven points on the kickoff return. We won the penalties. Usually, against Coach Snyder, you have to defend the quarterback run, which makes you susceptible to big plays. Last year, we got gashed on the quarterback run, so big plays weren't a factor. This year, we stopped it, but we got hit on big plays. And then we won the penalty game, but we gave up seven points on the kick return and that's what it came down to."
On if this was a missed opportunity for the team:
"I worry about that every year. Here's what I tell the team. They guarantee you get to play 12. Then, now in our league, if you play good enough you get the championship game. Then, if you do really good, you could potentially get two more. So the maximum is 15. Let's just say you have an unbelievable year and play 14 or 15 games. That's all you get for 365 days. It's not like basketball or baseball where you get to play a lot of games. There's a lot of work that goes in with a group of guys, and I always worry about a missed opportunity. That's in my mind all the time. It's the one issue I have. I'm pretty good about everything else. I know the talent we have, where our weaknesses are, the talent we compete against. Believe it or not, I'm pretty good at that, but I always worry about missed opportunities and what we could do better. Here's the good news. If you go back to about 2008, the year we won the Holiday Bowl, we were pretty good. If you look at our track record the past 10 years, I bet you seven of those 10 years we could play with anyone in the country on any given day. I could be wrong. I feel good about us coming back. We'll be around. Yes, this was a special group. Does that part eat on me that they couldn't get to whatever their ultimate goal was? Yes. It does, but life is full of events that make us feel not so good about things, which is why we believe in systems and things that say let's keep rolling. Until you can't draw another breath, you have a chance."
On Mason Rudolph and James Washington:
"I didn't know anything about James other than he was from a small town and when you go to a home basketball game at his high school half the people in the crowd are his family. That's all I knew. Kasey Dunn was head-over-heels over him. I had a hard time buying into recruiting him because when he played on tape it was like him out there now versus a bunch of junior high kids, just because he was so much faster and more athletic than everybody on tape. Then when I went and watched him play a basketball game, he jumped up to get a rebound, and his hand went to the top of the backboard and I was like, 'Woah.' Then I knew he was pretty good. … After he was here a year I felt like he was going to be pretty good. Did I know if he was Biletnikoff category? I don't know if you know that then. I wasn't sure about Mason because I didn't play him as a freshman. After they had been here about a year and a half and they started rolling, those two were pretty special together."
On Mason Rudolph's legacy:
"He will leave here as the most decorated player since Barry Sanders in my opinion. That's based on Barry playing back when we played and there was no social media. You'd be surprised at how many people in the country didn't even know he played or didn't actually see him play or know how good he was. Mason will leave as the most decorated player since then, in my opinion. He's won a ton of games. He plays with broken ribs. He has played with a broken foot. I think he's leading the nation in passing. … He has been tremendous for this school and tremendous in society."
On looking ahead to Kansas:
"You know what's interesting with them is that, I know what their record is, but they've had times either on offense or defense where they've played pretty good. You watch the Oklahoma game and wonder, 'If Mayfield isn't playing, how many points would they have?' Then you watch the Texas game, where offensively they score points – twice as many as we did when we were in Austin. That's kind of what I get when I see them."
On the defensive backs:
"We had discipline issues on our team, and we had a couple guys who didn't fall into culture here. So if they can't fall into the culture, they can't be here. I don't like that, but that's why we're in the position we're in. The big picture here is the culture, and could that have played a role Saturday? You bet it did, but I'm OK with that because I've got 122 class guys in the organization, period. That's more important to me than anything else, as much as we have to win and lose. You're right. A.J. Green and Rodarius Williams are tired. Tre Flowers is tired, even though he got a little bit of a break Saturday. The flip side is that everybody is tired, so they've got to find a way to practice, work hard ... They got caught looking at the backfield Saturday. That was a bigger issue than fatigue in my opinion."
On getting players ready after the loss:
"We've got quality people here. We don't have all the answers. Do we make mistakes? Do I feel like at times we got outcoached? Sure. Have we outcoached people? Sure. There are 200 people in this organization. Everybody follows and has the chain of command and understands the culture. We don't waiver from that, even though we've made sacrifices along the way. We started this thing 14 years ago, and there were a lot of sacrifices. That number has dwindled to where we don't have many anymore, but we had a few at the cornerback position and it factored in some. That's OK. We'll rally back. Our coaches will be fine. They have a responsibility to say, 'OK this was not good. This was good. This was poor. It's my fault.' Then you go into the team and say, 'This was my fault. This part was your fault. You fix yours. We're going to try to fix ours.' It's never going to be perfect. I haven't seen it yet in 30 years of college football."
Coach Mike Gundy
On this year's class of seniors:
"It's a special group, from top to bottom. You hear a lot about James Washington and Mason Rudolph and Chad Whitener and Tre Flowers and other certain guys, but the core group of guys that have been here for four or five years have won a lot of games and been very successful. I mentioned this last week, but for me, their contribution to society - for example, in Stillwater we have 400 homeless people and this team pitches in and feeds them every Thanksgiving. We hand out boxes of food and that takes place on Sunday, which was yesterday. I got to work early and my only goal outside of football was to make sure we went over there and handed the food out - I've done it for years. And I forgot about it and I felt terrible. I went in to my assistant, Danielle, and I asked, 'Who was there for me?' … Mason Rudolph. Dillon Stoner. … I mean, I'm just giving an example of the 10 or 12 guys. And Mason is a guy that threw a couple of interceptions and felt like he had an overthrow late. He had a good game, but on his standards, it wasn't as good as he wanted it to be, but he showed up the next day and handed out food to people that are homeless. That's the kind of kids that we have here. That's what makes me the most proud. We've known that they've been a top-15 group in the country the last four or five years, arguably every year."
On the Cowboy Culture:
"When we lose games like that, like I said, I told the guys that I thought we had the best team. All of the credit in the world to (Kansas State), their staff and their players, but my job is to evaluate talent and that's a game I thought we should've won. That goes back to the culture that we've created here. When you go home and you're disappointed - there's certain games where I'm not disappointed. I'm upset because I want the team to win, but I was disappointed after this one. When that happens, you go back to the culture because it gives you something to hang your hat on and that's why you have to do things right all the time. If you don't have that, you'll just be upset if you're only hanging your hat on wins and losses. I know you have to win or you won't have a job - I'm all for that. But these seniors, they're good people that do the right thing and that's most important."
On the team's mindset:
"Sundays are not very fun here when we lose. Everything builds up to in one week of preparation. For me to come in here and say that everyone's happy and passing around lollipops and telling jokes - that's not the way it is. There's some long faces, but that's my job to fix it, and the culture that we have allows them to get themselves ready to play the next game. It's the same way when you have a big win, and sometimes maybe a little worse because they're floating on cloud nine. It's the same thing with winning and losing, when people always tell you how good you are, you don't think you have to go as hard on that rep. But the difficult part when you lose is having to look at yourself in the mirror to see what went wrong. Same thing goes for me and the staff. Nobody really likes me on Sundays, and they darn sure don't like me when we lose, because I have to look at them and say, 'This was not good. We didn't put them in a position for success.' Even with myself - I'm involved on special teams. I worked all week on kick coverage so I had to turn around, look in the mirror and say, 'That didn't work.' That's what we do on Sundays."
On reviewing what went wrong against K-State:
"We lost the turnover battles and we gave up seven points on special teams. We had seven three-and-outs on defense - that's pretty good - but we gave up four huge plays. They used the formula that we've used around here for sometime. You get us three-and-out a few times, but we're eventually going to get you on a big play, and we got a little bit of our own medicine. In the end, what it came down to was the seven points on the kickoff return. We won the penalties. Usually, against Coach Snyder, you have to defend the quarterback run, which makes you susceptible to big plays. Last year, we got gashed on the quarterback run, so big plays weren't a factor. This year, we stopped it, but we got hit on big plays. And then we won the penalty game, but we gave up seven points on the kick return and that's what it came down to."
On if this was a missed opportunity for the team:
"I worry about that every year. Here's what I tell the team. They guarantee you get to play 12. Then, now in our league, if you play good enough you get the championship game. Then, if you do really good, you could potentially get two more. So the maximum is 15. Let's just say you have an unbelievable year and play 14 or 15 games. That's all you get for 365 days. It's not like basketball or baseball where you get to play a lot of games. There's a lot of work that goes in with a group of guys, and I always worry about a missed opportunity. That's in my mind all the time. It's the one issue I have. I'm pretty good about everything else. I know the talent we have, where our weaknesses are, the talent we compete against. Believe it or not, I'm pretty good at that, but I always worry about missed opportunities and what we could do better. Here's the good news. If you go back to about 2008, the year we won the Holiday Bowl, we were pretty good. If you look at our track record the past 10 years, I bet you seven of those 10 years we could play with anyone in the country on any given day. I could be wrong. I feel good about us coming back. We'll be around. Yes, this was a special group. Does that part eat on me that they couldn't get to whatever their ultimate goal was? Yes. It does, but life is full of events that make us feel not so good about things, which is why we believe in systems and things that say let's keep rolling. Until you can't draw another breath, you have a chance."
On Mason Rudolph and James Washington:
"I didn't know anything about James other than he was from a small town and when you go to a home basketball game at his high school half the people in the crowd are his family. That's all I knew. Kasey Dunn was head-over-heels over him. I had a hard time buying into recruiting him because when he played on tape it was like him out there now versus a bunch of junior high kids, just because he was so much faster and more athletic than everybody on tape. Then when I went and watched him play a basketball game, he jumped up to get a rebound, and his hand went to the top of the backboard and I was like, 'Woah.' Then I knew he was pretty good. … After he was here a year I felt like he was going to be pretty good. Did I know if he was Biletnikoff category? I don't know if you know that then. I wasn't sure about Mason because I didn't play him as a freshman. After they had been here about a year and a half and they started rolling, those two were pretty special together."
On Mason Rudolph's legacy:
"He will leave here as the most decorated player since Barry Sanders in my opinion. That's based on Barry playing back when we played and there was no social media. You'd be surprised at how many people in the country didn't even know he played or didn't actually see him play or know how good he was. Mason will leave as the most decorated player since then, in my opinion. He's won a ton of games. He plays with broken ribs. He has played with a broken foot. I think he's leading the nation in passing. … He has been tremendous for this school and tremendous in society."
On looking ahead to Kansas:
"You know what's interesting with them is that, I know what their record is, but they've had times either on offense or defense where they've played pretty good. You watch the Oklahoma game and wonder, 'If Mayfield isn't playing, how many points would they have?' Then you watch the Texas game, where offensively they score points – twice as many as we did when we were in Austin. That's kind of what I get when I see them."
On the defensive backs:
"We had discipline issues on our team, and we had a couple guys who didn't fall into culture here. So if they can't fall into the culture, they can't be here. I don't like that, but that's why we're in the position we're in. The big picture here is the culture, and could that have played a role Saturday? You bet it did, but I'm OK with that because I've got 122 class guys in the organization, period. That's more important to me than anything else, as much as we have to win and lose. You're right. A.J. Green and Rodarius Williams are tired. Tre Flowers is tired, even though he got a little bit of a break Saturday. The flip side is that everybody is tired, so they've got to find a way to practice, work hard ... They got caught looking at the backfield Saturday. That was a bigger issue than fatigue in my opinion."
On getting players ready after the loss:
"We've got quality people here. We don't have all the answers. Do we make mistakes? Do I feel like at times we got outcoached? Sure. Have we outcoached people? Sure. There are 200 people in this organization. Everybody follows and has the chain of command and understands the culture. We don't waiver from that, even though we've made sacrifices along the way. We started this thing 14 years ago, and there were a lot of sacrifices. That number has dwindled to where we don't have many anymore, but we had a few at the cornerback position and it factored in some. That's OK. We'll rally back. Our coaches will be fine. They have a responsibility to say, 'OK this was not good. This was good. This was poor. It's my fault.' Then you go into the team and say, 'This was my fault. This part was your fault. You fix yours. We're going to try to fix ours.' It's never going to be perfect. I haven't seen it yet in 30 years of college football."
Friday, June 05
Friday, May 29
Wednesday, May 27
Monday, May 18
