Big 12 football notes: Oklahoma State hopes familiar name came help running game

Want to hear Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy laugh?

Tell him the Cowboys struggled to run the ball last season. That line is sure to draw a chuckle.

“You’re being nice saying we struggled with the running game,” Gundy said Monday on the first day of Big 12 Media Days, pausing to laugh. “We weren’t very good at all. When you look back at the last couple of years with our running game, we didn’t do a good job of covering guys up and giving our backs an opportunity to make cuts.”

Oklahoma State’s rushing attack definitely had its troubles last season. The Cowboys rushed for 1,649 yards on 460 attempts, resulting in a mere 3.6 yards per carry, a number that ranked 113th nationally out of 128 teams.

Chris Carson, the team’s leading rusher, averaged 43 yards. Outside of 13 touchdown runs from quarterback J.W. Walsh, there were few rushing positives to speak of on the ground.

The Cowboys were the definition of a pass-happy team.

“For us to win as many games as we did and be as bad as we were running the football is pretty unbelievable,” Gundy said of Oklahoma State’s 10-3 season. “Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night surprised myself. It is really hard to win football games if you can’t run.”

Gundy is ready to stop laughing about his team’s running woes and to start relying on his running backs to make plays.

He thinks the Cowboys have an improved offensive line capable of opening holes. They may also have an upgrade at running back: Barry J. Sanders.

Though, Sanders is unlikely to follow in his father’s footsteps – 2,628 rushing yards, 37 rushing touchdowns and a Heisman Trophy as a junior at Oklahoma State – but he does seem poised to help the Cowboys in his final year of college football after transferring in from Stanford.

“He’s mature, he’s dependable, seems to be durable,” Gundy said. “He came from a winning program and from an offense that obviously runs the football. So we’re excited about him being a part of our team. We hope that he will make a contribution that will help us be a better running football team.”

TCU running back out to miss season — The Horned Frogs will be without one of their best running backs. Shaun Nixon, a former sought-after recruit who gained 596 yards of total offense last season, won’t play until next spring while he recovers from an undisclosed injury, TCU coach Gary Patterson said. Nixon, a redshirt sophomore, led the Horned Frogs with nine receptions in a come-from-behind win at the Alamo Bowl and threw a touchdown pass against Texas.

He was expected to serve as backup to starter Kyle Hicks, while also seeing playing time at receiver.

In the conversation — Texas Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes is considered a Heisman contender coming off a season in which he threw for 4,653 yards and 36 touchdowns.

The junior says he hasn’t thought much about his chances of actually winning a national award, but he does have high expectations for the year ahead.

If he reaches them, he thinks individual trophies will take care of themselves.

“I don’t necessarily feel pressure to score every possession, I feel like that is something we should just do,” Mahomes said. “Coach (Kliff) Kingsbury thinks that, too. Every possession is an opportunity to score, so why not score? Even if we are up 49-24, why not keep scoring until they make us stop? Our goal is to make Coach Kingsbury take us out and bring in the second team.”

Different offense in Ames — New Iowa State coach Matt Campbell is impressed by the explosive spread offenses featured in the Big 12, but he won’t try to mimic them with the Cyclones.

Iowa State returns running back Mike Warren, who ran for 1,339 yards and five touchdowns as a freshman last season. In all likelihood, he will be the focal point of the offense, with receiver Allen Lazard stretching the field at receiver.

“Just because it’s a high-scoring, pass-happy league that doesn’t mean we have to play that way,” Campbell said. “We have to build our program around what our university stands for, what Iowa State stands for, what our program should look like. We have to be us. We can’t try to be somebody else. We’re going to work hard at that.”

This story was originally published July 18, 2016 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Big 12 football notes: Oklahoma State hopes familiar name came help running game."