Sanders' Mobility and Spreading the Football Highlighted Offense in Win Over Cyclones
STILLWATER -- All the scuttlebut and talk about who would play quarterback with starter Spencer Sanders returning from the ankle injury that he suffered on the first series of the first game of the season with Tulsa or freshman Shane Illingworth, who did a marvelous job filling in and helping the Cowboys go 3-0. Head coach Mike Gundy muddled the picture with his comments, but in the end it was just what we predicted. Sanders wasn't going to lose his position to the ankle injury against Tulsa. If this were baseball, your choice was a crafty quarterback with more pitches in his repertoire or the big fastball thrower. Both are good, but the older pitcher that can run is 1-0 vs. Iowa State.
It was Sanders and despite his two interceptions, one on a throw that was a little low and was deflected and another that was a bad read, Sanders threw for 235-yards comleting 67 percent of his passes and a touchdown. He ran for 71-yards on 15 carries and that included a touchdown.
The running came in handy and always will against a good defense. It was nice that Sanders protected himself against everything other than Iowa State's Kyle Tayvonn, flagged for a targeting that was squashed in review.
"As you can see I ran hard, but I never led anyone 1-on-1 and just let them take me out," Sanders explained after the game. "I was always leaning my body to the side, or knowing I was gonna get tackled, just going down rather than taking a hit. I don't feel like I took on any head on hits today and that's good. I just want to keep on running like I'm running, protect the ball and help this team."
"It was a little bit different because he's so dynamic, you want to use what is a real strength of his and that's being able to run the football," offensive coordinator Kasey Dunn added. "And he can throw it too, so that's a little bit of a blend. We needed it at the end to buy us some time, get a couple first downs, move the chains, not put our defense in a bad position, and he was able to deliver with his feet."
Sanders running ability definitely causes defenses to play a little different and that led to some big plays, some Sanders made and some he distributed the ball to others. The first play of the game was a nifty screen pass that Dunn had drawn up for Chuba Hubbard. In all, eight different receivers caught passes in the game. The most this season by one with the previous high being seven against Tulsa. There were five receivers that made multiple catches which equaled the five with multiple receptions against Kansas. There was incentive to get passes thrown to the cowboys backs.
"Going into (the game) there was a little bit of a rivalry," explained Dunn. "They've got a great set of tight ends at Iowa State and our guys wanted to play well and we wanted to get our guys active too. There was a little bit of motivation from both Logan (Carter) and Jelani (Woods) going into the game. So we felt, hey let's get these guys a couple shots in there and we did. They have a middle field player that's really hard to account for in their run (defense) scheme. So if he's showing up quickly, then you want to get something over his head and we got him at the right time. It was a good action, good play-fake, and (we) just kind of got it over top of his head and had a chance to make a play. Jelani did a great job getting it caught and getting across the goal line."
It was a very solid offensive performance with Sanders playing his first full game since the TCU win last season. The Cowboys had 461-yards of offense against a team averaging allowing 363.5-yards a game and 226-yards rushing against a team allowing just 97.3-yards a game.
As we get into Sunday, the celebration is over and the work for Texas is starting. With what Sanders and his teammates want to accomplish there is little time for reflection and som much more for planning and preparing.
"We're just going to take it day-by-day and week-by-week and next week we have Texas, so we're going to do the samethings that we did to prepare for Iowa State," Sanders said of the future weeks including this next one. "We're going to practice hard and keep doing what we do and if we do it well, no MA's (missed assignments) and practice hard then we know that we can win any game that we play. We have to keep our mindset right and keep doing what we do."
