Cotton Bowl Preview

January 1st, 2010 by James Lawrence

Cotton_Bowl_logo The 2010 Cotton Bowl Classic will be the first installment of this seven decades event to be held in Jerryland, the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX. Jerryland is the NFL’s premiere mega-stadium, seating 80,000 with expandable capacity up to 111,000; famous for the Jerrytron, the world’s largest screen at 11,520 square feet in high def resolution which hangs above the field and has been used as target practice by NFL punters.

Okay, enough about the stadium. Ole Miss and Oklahoma State entered 2009 as darkhorse contenders in their respective conferences, and Ole Miss’ victory over Texas Tech in last year’s Cotton Bowl was a big reason for their side of the hype. Neither team has lived up to their hype, as the Cowboys are the only team coming into this game ranked and the teams have combined for seven losses. Whoever wins this one, it’s likely that voters will show a bit more restraint before jumping on their bandwagon this summer.

Oklahoma State

Despite losing their four biggest games in 2008, a 9-4 record with backing by billionaire alum T. Boone Pickens was apparently enough to get a preseason top 10 ranking. This was a little baffling, but I think people figured that with Zac Robinson, Kendall Hunter, and Heisman contender Dez Bryant (pictured left, thanks Icon SMI) leading the offense, they’d field one of the better offensive units in the country this season.

And the season actually appeared that it would live up to the hype – for a week. With an impressive defensive victory over the Georgia Bulldogs, visions of this explosive offense backed by a competent defense propelled the Cowboys to 5th in the AP rankings. But the team choked the following week, and worse lost RB Kendall Hunter to injury midway through the loss against Houston. Hunter played sparingly throughout the season, but was never the big stats featured back that many expected. Perhaps more devastating was the loss to Dez Bryant in the midseason due to NCAA eligibility issues.

Despite the good record (9-3, 6-2), Texas Tech is the closest thing to a quality victory that OSU has since their opening week win over Georgia. Texas and Oklahoma bested the Cowboys by a combined 68-14, and the Cowboys did not have to face Nebraska in conference play.

Keith Toston has done a good job in replacing Hunter, leading a rushing attack that averages 192 ypg to rank 22nd in the FCS. However, Zac Robinson has struggled mightily without Bryant; his passing efficiency was a mediocre 135.4, very close to the team’s overall rating (135.1) which is 43rd nationally.

On the other side of the ball, OSU has improved to finish the regular season ranked #33 in scoring defense. This is largely due to having the #6 rushing defense in the country, giving up just 87 ypg. Again I am skeptical about reading too much into this. Oklahoma finished the season with a good offensive effort against this unit, and Texas was able to score at ease although that was more the fault of Zac Robinson and his four interceptions.

The bottom line is, Oklahoma State limped through most of this season, and it’s unfortunate that they did because you can’t control key injuries and Dez Bryant really didn’t violate NCAA amateur classification restrictions but lost his eligibility due to a foolish mistake (lying to the NCAA about something that was legal in the first place).

Ole Miss

Ole Miss is mercurial, to put it mildly. While they could’ve competed with most SEC teams in theory at the outset of the season, they spent a good part of the first half of the season doing whatever the football equivalent is of dicking around. Simply put, there was no reason they should’ve lost to South Carolina; this team was too good for that. Losing to Alabama is understandable (although they got straight-up shut down against them, which isn’t great) and the loss to Auburn is at least within the realm of reason. Still, watching this team – especially in the first half of the season – you got the distinct impression they just weren’t trying.

That perception likely goes back to Houston Nutt, who doesn’t strike me as a coach who’ll lead Ole Miss to the Promised Land (although he’s good enough to get them to a SEC Championship Game or two); his teams have typically been uneven in their week-to-week effort – a quick history lesson:
- 2009: Lost to South Carolina, 16-10
- 2008: Lost to Vanderbilt, 23-17
- 2007: Lost to Kentucky, 42-29

You have to go back to 2006 to find a season where Nutt beat everyone he should’ve (and even then it can be argued the Razorbacks should’ve beaten Wisconsin). At this point, it’s less something to be corrected and more a character flaw; these kind of things would’ve been fixed at this point, but that’s just who Nutt is. It’s a problem, yes, but it’s a problem much like your grandfather who keeps on referring to anyone who even looks kind of Asian as the Japs; you can reprimand him if you’d like, but it’s not going to result in a whole lot of behavioral correction.

The one legitimate knock on Nutt has been his inability to develop QBs; witness the running joke of the Dick brothers and the growth of Matt Jones (6’6” mobile QB who still couldn’t top 57.5% completion in his senior year). Along those same lines, it’s not really surprising to see Jevan Snead regress from a decent 56.3% completion, 26/13 TD/INT, 2,762-yard season to a 54.3% completion, 20/17 TD/INT, 2,464-yard season. With an excellent Cotton Bowl, Snead can approach his total yardage and completion percentage numbers from last season, but that’s still no year-over-year growth, which will hamper his draft stock just a bit.

Where Nutt does excel is in creating opportunistic rushers; this year, Dexter McCluster played that role perfectly – at least once he got around to being used. For whatever reason, his largest all-purpose yardage total through the first half of the season was against Memphis (115 yards, hardly ground-breaking). However, against every FCS opponent the rest of the season he went for at least 145 and averaged no worse than 6.1 yards per play – the highlight being his absurd 324-yard, 11.2 yards-per-touch day against Tennessee, the likes of which still gives me nightmares. McCluster sees time all over the field, especially in Wildcat formations, but hasn’t been as much of a receiving threat as he probably could be.

The receiving threat honor has fallen to Shay Hodge, who’s been more consistent in a 1,000+ yard season complete with 8 TDs. He was only really shut down against South Carolina (along with the rest of the offense, helped in part by an atrocious game from Snead), but in every other game contributed something of worth. Like the rest of the offense, he came on as the season wore on, highlighted by a 7-catch, 117-yard day against LSU.

The rest of the running game has been lackluster; Brandon Bolden is the biggest prototypical running threat, and hyped RB Enrique Davis is following the Darrell Scott Career Path to Success; I’m a bit surprised he hasn’t transferred yet. The offensive line also isn’t much to write home about; it’s likely that the early-season struggles were in part due to issues on the line. LT Peria Jerry is the best of the lot.

I was concerned at the outset of the season that the Rebel pass defense wasn’t going to be enough; those concerns now seem somewhat unfounded. Ole Miss’ defense wasn’t great by SEC standards, but it was certainly good enough; Greg Hardy and Emmanuel Stephens led the team in sacks with 5 apiece (Hardy only played in 8 games, as he was battling injuries for a good part of the season) and the 30 team sacks was good enough for 2nd in the conference. Hardy is the best of the front seven when healthy; DT Jerrell Powe gets a lot of press as well. In the secondary, Cassius Vaughn and Kendrick Lewis are the stars (Lewis in particular sees a lot of action).

Special teams is mostly underwhelming save KR Jessie Grandy, who ran a couple of kickoffs back for TDs this year. K Joshua Shene was good but by no means great; in addition, Ole Miss just wasn’t in FG range very often (partially due to the aforementioned spastic offense).

What to Expect

Perhaps the biggest question is which Houston Nutt shows up for this. The Rebels are 3 point favorites, but at the same time, he’s bringing an unranked team into a bowl game against a ranked team, which sounds like a Nutt kind of win. That aside, it could be a defensive battle, but I don’t think Dexter McCluster and Shay Hodge can be contained all game. What Oklahoma State offensive playmakers will provide an answer against a pretty decent SEC defense?

Pick: Mississippi

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