Watching the Houston film was painful for Oklahoma State head coach Eric Morris this weekend.

There are many reasons why. The Cowboys (4-2, 2-1 in Big 12) lost a game they could have won against a ranked team that might have catapulted OSU in the Top 15 teams in the country. It also would have kept Oklahoma State undefeated in conference play along with BYU, Texas Tech and Utah.

There were opportunities missed across the tape. His “Tell the truth” Monday with his players wasn’t as bad as the loss to Tulsa. He didn’t use the words “compliment sandwich,” but that’s how it felt like some of the feedback and corrections were delivered.

“Usually we do good ball, bad ball in there, you know?” Morris said. “Just to really try to learn from some situations that we think we can learn from as a team, and then to really praise the kids where they did good, right?”

But he noticed something consistently on the tape, something that led him to say that OSU was playing with “10 players” at times against Houston. It’s something OSU must fix for Colorado on Saturday.

Why OSU Can’t Play with 10 Players

Houston made big plays against Oklahoma State throughout the contest. Morris’ frustration in watching the tape was in seeing 10 players do one thing and one player doing another, meaning that one player blew an assignment that would have led to a more positive outcome for the Cowboys.

“Too many times in that game we were playing with 10 people and people not executing their job,” Morris said.

That’s a different scenario from the Tulsa game, where so many players weren’t doing their jobs. Morris wanted to deliver that feedback in a way in which players wouldn’t point fingers, he said. That’s the danger when there is one player not doing their job. Football is a concert so to speak. Everyone playing must play their “instruments” together.

So, Morris picked two plays in this case. He wanted to get something across to his team.

“I picked two clips of chances where we had a chance at that position to make a play to maybe change that game, right? And every single one of them, I think it was a good illustration to our team just how close we were, right?” Morris said.

That “10 player” scenario wasn’t limited to a particular area. The secondary gave up five touchdown passes. But the offensive line gave up pressure and sacks. The wide receivers were out of place at times, which led to incompletions and an interception. The defensive line didn’t get the pressure needed.

All those things combined for Saturday’s loss. Morris said his team can’t allow it to carry over into the Colorado game. That’s what OSU’s film study was about this week.

“We played with 10 way too many times, and so we had a chance to make some plays to change the game [and didn’t],” Morris said.