Photo Attribution: US Presswire

Welcome to Week 4 of the blogpoll, my objective (OSU isn’t ranked!) if not incomplete (gotta be honest, haven’t seen Louisville take one snap) look at the college football landscape.

Full poll after the jump.

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Photo Attribution: US Presswire

Since Harry Birdwell (okay, Boone Pickens) ushered in the Gundy era in 2005, the OSU offense has changed identities several times. We’ve seen some of the best offense in college football under Gundy’s reign. Let’s give the coaching staff a pass on the awful 2005 season. Since then, the offense has finished outside of the top 20 in total offense only one time (2009). Even more impressive, the offense has finished in the top 7 in total offense on four occasions.

Okay, so we’ve seen some good offense. What I think is more interesting is how our offensive philosophy has changed during that time period to fit the talent we had at the time.

Look at the chart below. It looks a little busy, but it’s pretty simple. Three categories: OSU, the Big 12, and the NCAA. I took the rushing plays for each season and divided them by the total offensive plays for the season.

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Nielsen Network & O’Colly

Some of the guys (Amilian, Nolo, OKC Dave, Carson) and I got together to discuss J.W. Walsh, Wes Lunt, and how all of this is going to shake out. Enjoy.

1. Finish this sentence: J.W. Walsh is _____________.

OKC Dave – still a freshman. I’m excited about how he played against Louisiana – how could you not be? But people need to remember that he’s still going to make mistakes, and those mistakes are likely to cost us a game or two as long as he’s in the lineup. The good news is that he played very well in the highest level of Texas high school ball, he has a year under his belt learning from Monken and Weeden, and he seems to have a natural confidence that will help him bounce back from the freshman mistakes he’s likely to make.

Carson – limited but a play-maker.

Nolo – a gamer, a good teammate, and the kind of guy that’s easy to root for. Zac 2.0.

Amilian – going to scare the hell out of me on his floaters against Texas. There were a couple passes that were knocked down or barely squeezed between defenders against Louisiana. Texas will make plays on those balls.

Pistols – going to have to win the Texas game with his arm. It won’t take a lot, and honestly I’m not sure if he’s even capable of a little, but running the game open against Louisiana’s linebackers and ends is a little different than running it open against Texas (see: 2009 performance, Zac Robinson).

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Photo Attribution: US Presswire

Two years ago, after OSU started 8-1 with Weeden and Blackmon and Texas started 4-5, the Cowboys were only -5 favorites in Austin. Last year much of the same, and only -7 favorites. This year we know much less about OSU and Texas looks much better than it has in recent memory.

And OSU opened as a 5.5 favorite.

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Of course after the national media collectively fondled Robert Griffin on national television (metaphorically of course) after his week 1 jewel of a game (19/26 320 yards 2 TD 0 INT). I expected, and got, very little of the same after Weeden put up basically the exact same numbers last week.

I was fired when I first saw Weeden’s stats against the Bengals, not that he put up Weeden-esque numbers but that he recovered in such a huge way from week 1. Then I started thinking about how Weeden’s second game performance ranked among rookies in, say, the last 10ish years. Here’s what I found…

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Photo Attribution: Nielsen Network & O’Colly

*by a quarterback

Editor’s note: OKC Dave wrote the post and I (Kyle, @pistolsguy, pistolsboy, whatever you want to call me) am doing the footnotes…

@pistolsguy asked me to put together a weekly stat post for the blog based on something I find interesting. That’s a vague pitch¹, and I plan to take full advantage of it. This will be an adventure. Here goes nothing…

Any fantasy football fans out there? Even if you’re not a fantasy owner, I think you’ll like this post. Any fantasy football owner know that a QB with wheels can rack up some crazy fantasy points (in a fantasy league with standard scoring, rushing yards are more valuable than passing yards and running into the endzone gets you more points than passing into it).

After seeing Walsh march all over the field Saturday after coming in for an injured Wes Lunt, I got to thinking. How would Walsh’s impressive performance stack up against other OSU quarterbacks in terms of fantasy points²?

Using standard fantasy scoring, I ran the numbers on every game in the Miles/Gundy era. I only looked at quarterbacks this time…I’ll come back to this when I run out of ideas some other week. Here’s standard fantasy scoring if you’re not familiar:

• 1 point for every 25 passing yards
• 4 points for a passing TD
• -2 points for an INT
• 1 point for every 10 rushing yards
• 6 points for a TD

Okay, let’s count down the top 5 fantasy days for OSU quarterbacks in the Miles/Gundy era³:

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