⚡ CFB Dashboard

By the time he met with the media on Tuesday morning in the west end zone team room at Boone Pickens Stadium, Oklahoma State coach Eric Morris had moved past the pain of the 24-10 loss at Tulsa.  Like a good coach must do, Morris had settled into finding the positive side of such a painful defeat. "That's as bad as it gets, what we faced starting off the way that we started off with so much hype and whatever," Morris said at his weekly news conference. "I'm happy in a way. Not happy at all that we lost — we spend way too much time, resources, too many people over here that pour their heart and soul into this to want to go out there and have a performance like that. "But the only thing is, I'm excited because I know exactly where we're at right now as a program, as a team, where we did OK, where we were just awful and you start making a checklist of things you got to improve on. Can you do that all in one day? Absolutely not. But I know exactly where we're at." The toughest part of that chore is Saturday's looming visit from No. 6 Oregon, kicking off at 11 a.m. Saturday at BPS, broadcast on ESPN. The Ducks didn't overwhelm Boise State in a 34-27 win last Saturday, but they remain a national title contender, capable of exploiting the Cowboys in even more areas than Tulsa did.  Morris listed all the parts of his team's performance that bothered him in the Tulsa loss — and it was a long list, from the missed opportunities in the passing game, poor pass protection, turnovers, fourth-down mishaps, communication errors and more. "I could sit here and we could go over so many different things we're disappointed about," Morris said. "We sat up here yesterday morning, first team meeting, and we had some hard discussions. We watched it together, and I think football is one of those things, the greatest team sport in the world. One person not doing their job exposes everybody in this program. And that happened in a variety of different ways." Conditioning concerns left Morris self-reflective Among Morris' top list of concerns from the loss was his team's struggles with conditioning.  "The heat, and were we in shape," he asked rhetorically. "Obviously, I didn't think that we were in shape good enough to play, just going back and watching, seeing our body language on the sideline in the fourth quarter and people throwing up.  "There's a bunch of issues. I'm not discounting that. I know that, probably more than anybody. There's things we gotta start addressing and we gotta start building a program. This is the way I've done it in the past and I have full confidence in the way we're gonna do it here again." The conditioning concerns are among the topics that keep Morris up at night. "All these things are self-reflection," he said. "The mind is, all night, can't sleep and you just replay everything in your mind. You take notes. Obviously, there's people that have been around it and there's a bunch of science involved. So we'll get a bunch of smart people in a room and try to figure out the best way to solve it." Competition open at left tackle, backup running back Morris confirmed that Jacob Sexton is out for the year with a broken lower right leg, though the coach isn't ready to say who will get the starting job in Sexton's place at left tackle this week. "Whoever practices the best this week," Morris said. "We'll see who gives us the best chance to win."  The depth chart listed either Desmond Magiya or Shaun Torgeson as the potential starter. Both players spent time at the position Saturday after Sexton was injured on the opening drive. Following the game, Morris suggested the backup running back job behind starter Caleb Hawkins also needed to be settled, but it will be handled the same. Tre Page III, Ayo Adeyi and William Mason all got snaps at running back, though only Page and Adeyi received carries.  "Completely open," Morris said. "So may the best man win." Other notable quotes Morris on his overall assessment of the team's struggles at Tulsa: "Execution is going to be a huge deal and a word you'll hear me say over and over and over the course of this whole year now, because we had some things going back and watching that, where we had advantageous boxes and we had angles and we had all this stuff and and we got beat at the point of attack," he said. "That happened and that's something where we could point to a ton of different things. But we got to get that fixed, first and foremost." Morris on OSU's defensive tackles: "A really bright spot for us was I thought our interior D-line played good. I thought they were physical and rolled in and out of there. I really liked what they were able to put on tape." Morris on the potential of facing Oregon's newly added five-man defensive line: "I don't know, they could attack it that way and get it out fast or attack it where they say we don't have to rush that many and keep one more in coverage because of what you have on tape. So I think we'll probably see both at some point in the game." Morris on OSU's fourth-down failures: "Didn't execute them. Really liked the first one, the call that we had down there. Got out-executed. The second one, we fumbled. Not very good. We put the ball on the ground. Third one, we misidentified the front and went to the wrong people up front. So, there's so many problems in so many different things. We've got to address those, and we've got to be tough, like, are we mentally tough enough more in key moments to focus on what your job is and communicate it and get it done? Obviously, the answer was no for the last game, and that's an area that we've got to grow." Morris on his likelihood to remain aggressive on fourth downs: "It just depends on where we're at. Fourth down-and-1 are go's. Going back and look at it, don't hate the calls. Obviously, hate the execution piece of it and what the outcome was. But I've always been aggressive in those situations. But obviously, if this becomes a trend, I gotta be smart enough to say, let's punt the ball away and let our defense play good defense and try to get it back."