Dana Holgorsen Says He Was Hired At OSU For One Reason

Dana Holgorsen talked a lot about Oklahoma State this week at his press conference. He praised the facilities, talked up Glenn Spencer and discussed why he was hired in the first place. Let’s take a look at what he said.

On the atmosphere in Stillwater

“It’s always a fun trip to go to Stillwater. Have a lot of ties with Stillwater and Oklahoma State. Always a great place to go coach a football game, great place to play a football game and a great place to watch a football game. It’s a spectacular facility. They have a great fan base, great crowd.

“It doesn’t matter what time it’s going to be, they’re going to be there. It’s homecoming. It’s going to be full. It’s going to be fun. They have a good quality team. Coach Gundy has done a great job this year as he always has. These guys are playing well. Had an unfortunate loss earlier in the year. If you can consider it a loss. This team can very easily be sitting at 7-0, and that’s the way that we have to approach it.”

On QB1

“Mason Rudolph is probably the best pure pocket passer that we have in our league. Probably considered one of the better ones in the country when it comes to that. Doing a good job of protecting him. Have great receivers that he’s throwing to. They’re averaging 40-some points a game. They’re capable of scoring more than that, so we have to be on guard with what they’re doing. I know we’ll be prepared to be able to go against that.”

On Glenn Spencer

“Defensively, I have a lot of respect for Glenn Spencer. They’re a tough bunch to go against. Glenn was there when I was there. He’s a smart guy, he gets very creative with his schemes, and gets his guys playing hard. They were a tricky bunch last year to go against and they’re the same thing this year. They lost a first-round draft pick in (Emmanuel) Ogbah, a good corner, good linebacker, everyone else is back. It’s the best safety bunch that we’ve went against.”

On Special Team

Special teams is always an area that you have to pay attention to. They’re extremely solid in their kickoff and punt coverage units. They have the (OSU senior kicker) (Ben) Grogan kid, all-time leading scorer at Oklahoma State. Four year starter, been around there for a long time, is extremely solid in the kicking game. He can make kicks from anywhere.

“They’ve blocked how many kicks? At the Texas game it seems like they blocked four or five of them. They just do a good job at special team. Coach Gundy is very influential in that, spends a lot of time with it and they’ll be ready to go.

On Road Games

Big challenge. It’s a huge test for us. Playing on the road is hard. Playing in Stillwater is difficult and these guys bring challenges in all of the phases and it will be tough. Our guys are going to understand that, they’re going to know it, they’re going to prepare hard for it and we’re going to get ourselves ready to play Saturday, and it should be a fun atmosphere and a fun game to be a part of.”

Why he was hired at OSU

“Just Brandon Weeden. He was going to be the quarterback, so he’s a drop back pocket guy kind of like who they have right now in Rudolph. I guess my track record was okay when it came to coach this guy on how to complete passes. I implemented a system, and I learned a lot from them as well.

“This has been kind of a yearly discussion when it comes to this but took some things from them that helped shape where I currently am. I think they took some things from me. Mike took some things from me where they currently are. I’m probably more like him five years ago now, and he’s probably more like me than five years ago now, which is kind of interesting.”

I don’t know how much Dana has become like Gundy, but he’s certainly coaching like him of late. Remember when he was on the hot seat last year and some people were wondering if we could net ourselves a Dana redux at OC? Yeah, no more.

Dana Holgorsen, very quietly, has now won 11 of his last 12 games.

— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) October 24, 2016

The part about Weeden was pretty fascinating to me. I knew that, I suppose, but I’m not positive I’ve ever seen Holgorsen talk about it so openly. According to Bill Haisten, Gundy did so in 2015.

Last year, Gundy told the Tulsa World that he considers his 2010 hiring of Holgorsen as “the smartest coaching move I’ve made.”

Dana will always intrigue me. I’ve mentioned this book several times now, but The Perfect Pass had some interesting stuff about how he didn’t want to play for Hal Mumme at Iowa Wesleyan but ended up there anyway. Then went on to coach for Mumme (and with Mike Leach) at multiple colleges.

Getting win No. 100 is going to be great for Mike Gundy no matter when it happens, but doing it against Dana on Homecoming? Yeah, that would be pretty sweet.