This is going to be a great game. Last year that Oklahoma defense really forced Weeden into a bad game, one of the few bad games I saw him play all year last year.
People think Iowa State was a bad game for Weeden. It wasn't. I reviewed that game pretty thoroughly. The whole "Weeden got exposed for not being able to throw if forced to move his feet" criticism is like the Pabst Blue Ribbon hipster favorite right now, but it has very little substance to it. I tracked 18 throws that Brandon Weeden threw that were not caught, two of them called back on penalty.
Do you know how many of those incomplete passes were pressured throws? Only three. One he threw away with four defenders in his face (literally, four). Another was his first interception of the game, which he earned by falling off the throw and thinking his arm alone would somehow magically put the ball into a super tight window. That's an over-confidence interception and it happens. In fact, it SHOULD happen to quarterbacks, and if I never see it happen, it's more of a red flag to me than it is when I do see it happen. The final pressured incomplete pass was one where he stepped up and out and worked the pocket beautifully to try and get his throwing lane so he could throw underneath to the perimeter, but the defensive end did a great job retracing and stabbing his arm out to hit the ball. That wasn't an accuracy or feet issue, it was a defensive end making a good play.
Otherwise I found several plays where he either did feel pressure, or the play call asked him to move his feet, and he completed the pass, or the ball was dropped. For instance he gets on a roll to his right side, throws the ball on the run, a bullet that goes no less than 41 yards through the air and hits Josh Cooper right in the diaphragm in a small window in tight man coverage...and Cooper juggles the ball going out of bounds. For a guy that supposedly can't throw when he has to move his feet, that sure was a pretty incredible throw.
The most remarkable aspect of that game was how people watching the game could let their ears cancel out their eyes. The announcer for that game was talking out of his anus all night, incorrectly diagnosing plays all over the place not just on the Oklahoma State offense but on the Iowa State offense as well. He's the one that kept bringing up over and over again about forcing Weeden to move his feet. Perfect example is a 3rd & 6 where Weeden was not pressured at all, but he had already had two tipped passes at the line, one that turned into an interception, so understandably he took the reminder to make sure to work your passing lanes from the back of the pocket. So he does, and he does it ideally. If you're trying to hit a tailback that leaks out to the middle on a delay, you need to create your own passing lane because he's sitting right behind where the linemen are. So that's what Weeden does, he shuffles from the back of the pocket and creates his passing lane so he can check it down on the delay to a guy who didn't have a defender within 10 yards of him. As Weeden is stepping left, he throws the ball. The tailback had leaked up the field and to his right, and he should have kept running right to run through the catch. Weeden led him on the front shoulder. But what does Jeremy Smith do? Freezes instead of running through, reaches out with his hands to the front shoulder, gets the ball right in cradle of his two hands, and drops it. What does the announcer do? He crows about how the defense forced Weeden to move his feet and so "Weeden missed him!". My favorite tweet right after the play was from a friend, who isn't a big Weeden fan and doesn't think he's the answer for the Dolphins, and said "If by 'missed him' you mean hit him right on target in the hands, yeah he missed him". But what do people do? They let their ears cancel out their eyes.
What happened in that game was pretty much a perfect storm of chicanery from an excellent defensive football team that found the extra possessions on offense to keep up with Oklahoma State until one more costly mistake ended the game. You have two fumbles from Joseph Randle. You have two interceptions that resulted from defensive linemen tipping the ball at the line. You have a surprise onside kick recovery. You have dropped 3rd down passes. You've got a 4th & 2 play call from Todd Monken that quite literally gave Brandon Weeden only one valid throw option, that being a 48 yard throw to the wide side of the field to a receiver running a deep fade against single coverage. These things are how you lose football games.
I have so much respect for the guys running the Iowa State defense after breaking down that game. You have some smart, athletic defenders on that defense. Everyone talks about corner Leonard Johnson, and he did do a pretty good job on Justin Blackmon, but upon review the linebackers A.J. Klein and Jake Knott had more effect on this game, as did safety Jacques Washington who forced a fumble AND came up with a pick.
A.J. Klein was perfect hell on the Oklahoma State ground game, and did really well against the pass as well. Here's a great example. Oklahoma State is trying to run a read-draw. They've got a 3 by 1 setup with 3 receivers strung out on the left and 1 receiver on the right. But the key is Josh Cooper lined up as the inner most slot receiver, and Joseph Randle is lined up in the backfield even with Brandon Weeden to his right, opposite side from where Cooper is. This is a play where Weeden has to read the strong side linebacker and if he backs up to cover Cooper then he hands the ball to Randle on the draw play. If the linebacker crashes down, he throws the slant to Cooper. A.J. Klein KNEW this play was coming, because he studied the film and knew what the 3x1 with Cooper and Randle set up for a triangle read on the Sam meant. He didn't back pedal, OR crash down. He stayed patient and rocked slightly backward to make Weeden respect the coverage and give the ball to Randle on the draw, and then Klein snapped forward and crashed the lane as quickly as he could.
On another 3rd & 3 play, I think Todd Monken kind of recognized that Iowa State sees those read-draws coming so he starts calling more assertive run plays. This one was a run out of Oklahoma State's favored diamond formation, with two upbacks split to each side of Weeden and a tailback behind him. They run the ball to the left and Oklahoma State does a perfect job getting a hat on a hat all the way around. Joseph Randle has a clean hole and the only unblocked man is Klein, coming from the back side of the play. In these situations, you get a hat on a hat and then it's up to the runner to make the last guy miss. Klein scrapes through the trash and pounds Randle to the ground 1 yard short of converting the 1st down.
I'll give you another example of Klein's film study making a difference in the game. Klein once again has used his film study to recognize that given the defensive look, Brandon Weeden is going to want the weak side slant in single coverage. Prior to the snap, in order to bait Brandon into this, Klein begins cheating to the strong side, letting Brandon see him. Then right at the snap, like a whip crack, he bolts back over to the left side to play robber on the slant pattern. Lucky for Brandon Weeden that Klein overran the passing lane a little, because that could have been an earned interception. Klein does overrun it a little though and Weeden throws it into the open window, but Klein did a fantastic job athletically stabbing his back hand into the lane and knocking down the ball. Ball goes incomplete.
And on the final interception of the day, you have to look at what Jake Knott did on this play. I see what Weeden was reading and he had the right read all the way. They got Justin Blackmon matched up on the interior on a dig route with linebacker Jake Knott in man coverage, with his back turned to Brandon Weeden. Weeden sees this and thinks, there's not a linebacker in college football that can turn his back on me and cover Justin Blackmon in man as he crosses the middle, especially since I'm about to throw this ball perfectly. But I will be god damned if Jake Knott, who is an excellent coverage linebacker and WILL play in the NFL, didn't have the tightest damned coverage that I can even imagine a linebacker keeping on a guy with Justin Blackmon's skill. Even so, Weeden threw the ball perfectly. When the ball came out of his hands it was a tight spiral and was on it's way to the right spot in an extremely tight window. But a defensive lineman did a great job getting his hands up just in time to scrape the ball with a finger. Weeden throws the ball so hard it didn't even affect the ball's trajectory, but it did cause the ball to wobble more instead of having that tight spiral, and it slowed the pass down just enough for Jake Knott to close the tight window, get his hand up and affect the ball so that it got tipped in the air for an interception.
There's a saying that Rob Rang used recently. He was describing one of Weeden's passes during the game, and he said this throw best exemplifies the old adage that a great throw beats great coverage. There were two throws in the game that exemplified that best. But either way the point of the saying is that sometimes you do everything right and the other guy just does such a good job that there's not much you could have done. In this game, Oklahoma State's offense made several plays that way, but Iowa State's defense also made several plays that way, where the quarterback and receivers did everything right, but great awareness from the defensive players just trumped it. It was a great game.
Iowa State's defense made Landry Jones look much worse the following week.
