On Monday at his weekly press conference, Mike Gundy pulled a list out of his back pocket. What was on it? Christmas gifts for his kids? Directions to Thanksgiving dinner? A receipt for his subscription to PFB+?

None of that. Instead, he had written down … well, I’ll let him explain.

“About 2:30 in the morning, I finished this before I went home,” started Gundy. “We got any history buffs in here? Most of y’all are too young, but guys that have been around for a while, let me give you some numbers here and see if anybody can do this, OK? I got a prize if anybody can tell me what the answer is. I know nobody knows it because I was the only one at 2:30 working.”

OK.

“I’m gonna give you some numbers …

137

143

125

171

153

105

and 140

“OK? Now I’ll give you the last one: 180.

“So you ask me about [OU’s] offense. There was a guy that played at OU named Thomas Lott. He had 137 carries a season. There was a guy that played at OU named J.C. Watts. He averaged 143 carries. A guy named Charles Thompson, he averaged 125 carries. A guy named Steve Davis averaged 171 carries. A guy named Jamelle Holieway averaged 153 carries. A guy named Baker Mayfield averaged 105 carries, and a guy named (Kyler) Murray that averaged 140.”

Gundy has been on CFB Reference more than I have.

“Now who’s got 180 rushes this year? (Jalen Hurts) They’re a wishbone team, guys. They’re just lined up in the spread. Four hundred forty-nine of their offensive plays have been him either throwing it or carrying it. The next closest guy on their team has 114. So take those numbers into account. Forever we thought wishbone quarterbacks were the guys that carried the ball a lot. This guy’s got 180 rushes.

“It’s a one-man show. This is a triple-option team, and it’s just disguised as a spread. You gotta tackle him. You gotta make plays on him. It’s a one-man show.”

Haha, the best. Bedlam Week Mullet Gundy is just the best. He’s also … not wrong. When OU came back against Baylor two weeks ago, they ran 58 second-half plays. He either threw it or ran it on 44 of them. He dominated one of the 10-15 best teams in the country by himself. It’s the reason this video was made.

Kirk Herbstreit on Chris Fowler’s Instagram Live glowed about Jalen Hurts’ second half performance at Baylor. “He’s the baddest (mother f*****) there is”: #Sooners pic.twitter.com/x3TWY7oAtd — Kegan Reneau (@KeganReneau) November 18, 2019

Back to Gundy.

“You gotta give the guy credit. He’s taken hit after hit after hit after hit. I started thinking about that last night when I was watching it, and I said, ‘I’m gonna put some numbers together.’ I’m not real good with numbers, but I think I’m fairly accurate. Some of those I took, like Steve Davis played three years, Thomas played three years, I averaged his carries. And Baker and Kyler were on 14 games. (Hurts is) only on 11.

“So, when you talk about their offense, 449 times he’s had an outcome in the play and 180 of them he was rushing the football. It’s triple-option just disguised in the spread is all it is. We gotta stop the quarterback, we gotta tackle him. We gotta get him down.”

One of the primary storylines on Saturday for me is … how? Amen Ogbongbemiga? Malcolm Rodriguez? Trace Ford?!

“You gotta play five-on-five or six-on-six or seven-on-seven. The willingness for them to run him and his willingness to run, he’s an extra guy. Like when we had Spencer, Spencer is the extra guy, so the box numbers are equal. … They’re triple-option, you can watch the tape. Back comes here and he blocks, they fake to the other back and he blocks, and (Hurts) runs the ball. That’s just triple option. In most cases, they’re gonna have equal numbers. You have to be able to get off blocks, and you have to gotta be able to tackle. That’s what it comes down to.

“The more I watch it, I kept thinking, there’s only one guy that ever touches the ball. It’s him. It’s a one-man show.”

Maybe he’ll get lit up a little bit for this, but he’s also not exactly wrong.

Jalen Hurts with two rush TD … in the first quarter 🏃 pic.twitter.com/b02hxJ0QNe — SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 26, 2019

Hurts has accounted for 69 percent of OU’s country-leading 6,322 total yards. Against Baylor — when they had to have him — that number bumped to 78 percent. Surreal.

Gundy is correct when he says OU’s offense runs through one guy. Lincoln Riley would also be correct if he said the same about OSU’s.

Jalen Hurts vs. Chuba Hubbard — two legit Heisman contenders — in primetime is a hell of a way to end the regular season. One a human wrecking ball trying to bully a path into the playoff. The other a supercharged superhuman who turns slivers into seams and appears to create space where it does not exist.

So we should get two one-man shows on Saturday evening. And the Bedlam winner might be predicated upon which act the other team can end first.