1st And Football: Mike Gundy Full Interview

Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy and News On 6 sports director John Holcomb talked about the upcoming Cowboys' season for our Oklahoma's Own Originals: 1st and Football special.

Here is the transcript of that conversation.

John Holcomb:

I know we talked about this in Las Vegas—about 20 years, 20 years as a head coach. How much has the game changed in those twenty years?

Mike Gundy:

The game kind of turns full circle. So when I first started as a head coach, we were trying to play fast on offense. Larry Fedora was our coordinator, and Larry and I were together at Baylor, and we talked about playing fast a lot. But our head coach then didn't want to play fast.

And then it kind of came back around, and we did that. And we've had a lot of success doing that with different styles of defense. The defense here has always changed.

And then we slowed down a little bit, and then we started playing really fast, and then we slowed down a little bit. So that's turned full circle. The tight ends being in the offense, out of the offense, back in the offense now. Defense has gone from 4-down defenses to a lot of 3-downs to now multiple defenses.

It hasn't really changed much. It just kind of turns full circle. But we've tried to stay in front of it the best we could, but you have to base that on the type of players that you have.

John Holcomb:

You have seemed to always do a really good job on the offensive side of the ball, especially of staying that one step ahead, forcing defenses to change to what you're doing instead of vice versa. Is that one thing that maybe you're most proud of in your head coaching tenure?

Mike Gundy:

I still go back that I'm convinced the RPO was originated right here. People in the SEC get credit for it. We can go back to video that we were running RPOs two years before they ever got into the SEC. But that doesn't make good for national media.

We've stayed out in front offensively because I'm an offensive guy. It allows me to spend more time and actually know what I'm doing.

I have learned a lot about defense in the last six or eight years—not enough to actually coach it, but enough to maybe help some. And I think that as we've transitioned that way, Jim Knowles and I started to work together his last few years here. Jim was highly intelligent, as we know, and would listen and make adjustments.

But I think that my offensive background has helped us in that area. But defensively, that's the area that we really want to improve in because, whether we like it or not, the committee that picks the playoff teams -- they want you to be good on defense. They favor defense more than offense.

John Holcomb:

I think it was Sonny [Dykes?] in Las Vegas who got the question about 4-down versus 3-down, and it was interesting. His answer was you would think if you're playing 3-down, it's easier to recruit depth than it is 4-down. But you're talking about a specific difference in the type of player between the two, aren't you?

Mike Gundy:

It is. It's actually a little more difficult in the 3-down because of the way you're playing your defensive linemen.

I don't think anybody would argue that Iowa State has perfected that side of it. And they've been able to get players that fit that system.

When Matt Rhule was at Baylor, they played it, and they had a real unusual player. His name slips me, but he played in for them. He's playing in the NFL now, and he allowed them to be really good in that 3-down set.

We want to play both here. I would like to be multiple on 1st and 2nd down in the 3-down and 4-down.

The personnel, at times, can keep you from doing that, but I feel like now we have the correct personnel to be able to play both.

John Holcomb:

You've got a lot of talent returning on both sides of the ball, but let's stay on defense here. With Nick Martin's breakout year last year—let me just start there. Was that something that you saw? You saw this guy has this kind of potential because that was a crazy good year last year.

Mike Gundy:

We really liked Nick in high school. He was way undersized for what people think you should recruit a linebacker to be at this level. But he played really hard and was violent. He would strike you in high school.

When he got here, Coach Glass was able to put about 30 pounds on him, and obviously, Nick is a worker. He loves to play football, and he kept that violent personality.

I don't think anybody would have seen 140 or 150 tackles coming from a guy that didn't play much the year before.

We've been very fortunate the last four or five years with Malcolm and then what Nick's bringing to the table. He's a special player at this level.

John Holcomb:

Generally speaking, defensively though, you've mentioned this more than once. You're going to have to tackle better as a team than last year to have the success that you want, won't you?

Mike Gundy:

We didn't tackle very well early in the year, but I told the team that was my fault. I protected them a little bit more than I should have, and we got into the first two or three games of the year, and we didn't tackle very well.

I should have known better than to think you can play in a game if you don't practice the same way. We've heard that all of our lives, but it's very true.

For some reason, I thought we could get away with it. I was so driven on making sure that we were healthy in the first game. And we didn't tackle very much, and it showed. Our tackling improved around game four or five, and we tackled pretty well for the rest of the season. So my goal this year is to tackle really well in Game 1.

In defense, in a sense, if you tackle and get them down, you don't drop coverage. Force offenses to run 8, 9, 10, 11 plays in a drive, and in most cases, the offenses are going to mess something up and set themselves back.

John Holcomb:

Overall, with such an experienced team coming back, a lot of the pluses are obvious. But when you have an experienced team like this, what are the concerns?

Mike Gundy:

The concerns are them to be complacent. In the summer, Rob Glass handles that, so that's not a concern of mine. Now, my job is to make sure over the next 15 days they're not complacent until we start to back off a little bit to get ready to play in the first game.

We have to put a lot of work in over the next 10 days in the way that we're going to handle the team to get them ready to play in the first game because we have a difficult non-conference schedule. A very physical non-conference schedule, and for that reason, the maturity helps us because we can force-feed them.

We didn't have that luxury the last few years. We can get them caught up really quick and then give us an opportunity to back off when we need to closer to the game.

John Holcomb:

Alan Bowman, he's been around for a long time. What do you expect Alan to be better at this year than maybe he has been in his career?

Mike Gundy:

Our system has always been driven by quarterback play, even back when Fedora was here. When we first started, everything was driven by quarterback play, and it's difficult to come in our offense as a quarterback and play without much experience. I'm looking to see quite a bit of improvement just because of his familiarity with our offense and the way that it's orchestrated. I look to see the same thing with Rangel.

Rangel has done some good things at times, but he hasn't had a chance to get very familiar with it. Bowman's played a lot now for us, and I think he understands our system. Quarterbacks that understand our system on offense generally will have really good years.

John Holcomb:

You use the word a lot with Ollie last year: humble. Given everything that he's gone through to this point—and there's been a little time now between the incident to now—what are you seeing from him right now? I know camp just opened, but what are you seeing from him?

Mike Gundy:

In some cases, I said this in Las Vegas that Ollie is very fortunate that he ran into a terrible situation and got out and didn't hurt anybody. Didn't hurt himself and didn't hurt anybody else.

And I think it made him aware of things that could happen. He's going to do some volunteer work and things that we've asked him to do to make him aware of the danger and the people that have gone through that, that have been tragically injured and had family members. They've lost family members.

And at times, if we can make terrible mistakes in life and get out of it without anybody being tragically injured or or lost, gives us a chance to learn from that and make us better. I think he understands that now. Only time will tell. That's on him.

Football wise, he has to practice harder and be more physical than he has and was last year in order for us to be successful.

We're going to hang our hat on what he does.

Now, defenses may choose to put everybody up there and just stop the run. That's fine. We have enough weapons that we can throw passes.

But our goal is to force him to do that. We're going to let him run. So he has to practice extremely hard for the next 15 days he has to get hit. In practice, he has to take care of the football and put himself in a position that he did last year. He did that last year with nobody knowing who he was, and he has to stay and practice the same way. And I've told him I got to see Barry Sanders and Thurman Thomas do it. They did it every day. They there was never a doubt by the way they practice and he needs to practice the same way.

John Holcomb:

Last one: new look, new schools in the league and new energy and that energy you can look to one guy, at least in Las Vegas. And it was Deion Sanders with Colorado and he had a very special word when he described you, he called you a legend.

Not everybody gets called a legend by a guy who, who kind of knows what he's talking about. I mean, how did that hit you? People started texting me about it, but it was interesting. I don't know, coach. When we went to Phoenix, to the meetings, one of the things I had actually forgot about it and then when we go to the meetings, I realized he was in there and I thought, "This will be interesting to see how these meetings go with him being in here."

Mike Gundy:

In the meetings, very different than what is in front of the lights. Asked good questions. Listened, joined in conversations and he didn't get to the position that he is now by not being a pretty smart guy. He's a genius in marketing and promoting. And the one thing that I've noticed when I read about him, I read things that he says, which I do all the other coaches is that he's ultra competitive, but he's in his own way and he's going to do things the way he wants to do it. It may be very unusual and some people do not want to accept that.

But from a distance looking because obviously I'm not in their camp, he has the ability to get people to want to migrate toward him. He's been that way all of his life. So that was an interesting comment that he made, but without pumping my own tires up, the guy does a lot of reading and research in my opinion, because you very seldom see people ask him a question that he can't comment on in an intelligent manner without a teleprompter. So he's generally been around the block and knows what he's talking about.

John Holcomb:

We're out of time, but I want to ask: One success for this team this year, what does that look like in the end?

Mike Gundy:

So offensively, we need to function and just do what we've done. We're going to be better than we've been in quite a while. If we stay healthy, we haven't been healthy at wide receiver in three or four years. We've struggled. Health wise and the offensive line off and on over the last four years, that's not easy for us at Oklahoma State. I feel better about our depth. I feel better where we're at from the health standpoint. Defensively like we talked about earlier, if we can avoid dropping coverage and we can get in our gaps and tackle and get guys down. We'll be just fine. I'm really excited about our special teams. We've got a number of guys returning that have covered and we have good returners. Joe Forte has done a great job in the special teams area. Now we brought in Sean Snyder who brings in 30 years of experience.

And our players have really enjoyed those two guys coaching them. So I think we're in a good position. We need the ball to bounce our way a couple of times. But if we're in good condition and guys will stay humble and play hard, we'll be just fine.