In a lunchtime piece about this weekend's game, Ubben recalled the contest last season between Baylor and OSU as a cautionary tale to those expecting a track meet to break out on Saturday morning. The game last year in Stillwater carried similar expectations going in before OSU raced out to a huge halftime lead and basically just salted the game away after that. Rather than a legitimate piece of advice, Ubben's post reads more like a reminder to Baylor fans about the vulnerability of our offense to another team with similar talent, especially one with WVU's current co-DC, Joe Deforest, on the sideline. Deforest was, of course, the safeties coach for Okie State last year. There's two things that jumped out at me, though, that Ubben neglects to mention.
First, he states that the O/U in that game was 72.5. The idea of a shootout implies that the O/U will be eclipsed ... and it was. The final score was 55-28. That means people actually got what they expected in that game, it was just more one-sided than they initially believed. Second, the reason it was so one-sided was that OSU's defense last season was actually quite good, much better than people gave them credit for being. That's why it bothered me so much when people made the argument that SEC teams should be in the championship because they're the only ones that play defense. OSU ranked third in defensive FEI last season in large part due to the caliber of offense they faced every where. But you wouldn't know that from the media, who holds on to the narrative that the Big XII hates defense like a child holds on to a treasured toy.