As I was watching the Bedlam game I kept having this funny feeling that I had seen this game before. Then afterward, when I was combing through the stats the same feeling reappeared. Where was this nagging deja vu feeling coming from? Then it hit me...here are the boxscores for the A&M and the OU game side by side:
| A&M | OSU | OU | OSU | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Downs | 29 | 21 | 28 | 19 | |
| 3rd down efficiency | 11-21 | 5-13 | 16-27 | 5-15 | |
| 4th down efficiency | 4-5 | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 | |
| Total Yards | 535 | 351 | 588 | 379 | |
| Passing | 409 | 284 | 468 | 257 | |
| Comp-Att | 40-62 | 28-42 | 37-62 | 28-43 | |
| Yards per pass | 6.6 | 6.8 | 7.5 | 6.0 | |
| Rushing | 126 | 67 | 120 | 122 | |
| Rushing Attempts | 44 | 26 | 45 | 23 | |
| Yards per rush | 2.9 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 5.3 | |
| Total Plays | 106 | 68 | 107 | 66 | |
| Penalties | 8-65 | 8-55 | 4-33 | 7-47 | |
| Turnovers | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | |
| Possession | 38:32 | 21:28 | 35:24 | 24:36 |
It is borderline amazing how similar the stats are. First downs, total plays, pass plays, run plays, passing, rushing and total yardage (and remember that in the A&M game the RBs had over 100 yards rushing but a couple of big sacks and a failed end around brought the rushing total down to 67 yards). On paper these were basically the same game... and honestly in person the games felt about the same.
Going by the numbers, Oklahoma State was dominated in both of these contests, yet they were both close, and each featured a different outcome... why? I think we all know the answer to this. In one game, Jerrod Johnson decided to gift wrap an int for Shaun Lewis in the final minute, while in the OU game the combination of a nice playcall and bad coverage delivered a couple of easy pitch-and-catch TD's for the visitors in the final minutes.
So these two boxscores serve as a bit of a lesson that the stats are often meaningless... but mainly they serve to illicit the reaction of: "Holy hell, I don't know if I have ever seen two games played by the same team in the same season that were this statistically close across the board".