Who won Week 4 in the Big 12?

On3 imageby:Ian Boyd09/27/21

Ian_A_Boyd

The Big 12’s “crab bucket” effect was in full force in Week 4 of college football as league play opened up. I thought Kansas State appeared to be in great shape heading into league play only for them to get blasted on the road at Oklahoma State, TCU took an embarrassing loss to the cross-town rival SMU Mustangs, Texas ran over a bad Texas Tech defense, Baylor won at home against Iowa State, and Oklahoma terrified their own fanbase but emerged victorious against West Virginia.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

We’ve seen all of these productions before, every single one of them, although the near-disaster against West Virginia is typically a shootout for Oklahoma and not a defensive struggle won with field goals. Texas Tech getting trucked by Texas in the run game is a bizarrely common occurrence since they fired The Pirate, Mike Leach.

Contrar-Ian says the glass is half-full

I know one TCU fan who was ready to throw in the towel on the Gary Patterson era by the time the SMU game was over. The Horned Frogs have tons of talent this season and little to show for it aside from a worthless win against Duquesne, a near-thing against Cal, and 350 rushing yards surrendered and a SMU flag planted on their own field.

The Mustangs talked their trash BEFORE the game with wide receiver Rashee Rice noting TCU had been “too scared” to play them the year prior while denigrating the attractiveness of Fort Worth as a travel destination for visitors of the Metroplex. I don’t think he was trying to bait TCU into being overly focused on the SMU passing game, with the Frog issues in the secondary and the Mustang’s skill talent this was probably going to happen regardless.

However…

The technique employed by TCU’s two-deep safeties in these two clips is known as a “back-pedal.” Notice also the alignment and play of the linebackers, 5-on-5 and 6-on-6 in the box in these two clips with the extra linebackers lined up outside of the box and thinking pass-first before closing to help against the run.

That’s now how TCU normally does things.

Gary Patterson tried to use slanting up front by the D-line (sans an injured Corey Bethley) while having his linebackers do some two-gapping or waiting for plays to get funneled and it went sideways for them.

Dee Winters in particular had a rough outing with only four tackles, often caught in no-man’s land or by offensive linemen who didn’t pay much heed to moving TCU’s slanting tackles but often just gave them a sideways shove and advanced to the linebackers.

Later in the game when they needed to stop the run, the Frogs adjusted back to their normal “read” coverage with the linebackers committed to the box and the weak safety entrusted with covering a boundary slot.

They still had some issues with SMU fullback Tyler Lavine on some iso plays down the stretch and then on these two quarterback runs on third downs which bled clock away from the Frogs.

In most of these instances, save for one of the iso runs (none of which are GIF’d here), weak safety Nook Bradford is caught out of position by the quarterback run game. He’s too deep on the zone follow play in example one and in example two the Mustangs DOUBLE Ochaun Mathis with the fullback and the flexed out tight end and Bradford is still crashing to the opposite end thinking running back.

Gary Patterson claimed after the game he told his defenders it’d be a quarterback keeper before the play and they still got caught.

So all of that…sounds pretty bad, right?

Yes, but at least they didn’t get run over by SMU while playing their preferred defenses for countering spread run game. Additionally, I bet we see cornerback Noah Daniels and defensive end Khari Coleman back for their game next week against the Longhorns. Patterson and the Frogs will get back to doing what they know best against the Longhorns, loading the box against spread runs and leaning on man coverage and well-prepared safeties. If the Longhorns blow them away and brand in Bevo in the middle of their field, then it will be time to panic.

Contrar-Ian says the glass is half-empty

In the offseason, I thought the Baylor Bears would most likely be improved on offense but definitely wanted to see how well a rebuilt line and new quarterback would take to the new wide zone system. In the first three games of the season, they looked terrific albeit against bad competition.

Then I wondered about how consistently their run game would be there against a better defense, such as Iowa State’s proven unit, and how Gerry Bohanon would look if the wide zone machinery was monkey-wrenched.

It would appear from Baylor’s 31-29 victory that the questions were all answered positively, but a closer look suggests maybe the opposite.

Baylor’s running backs ended up running the ball 21 times for 85 yards at 4.0 ypc. Add in Gerry Bohanon’s 8-51 and you get to 136 yards at 4.7 ypc, which is better but not dominant. Over the course of the second half, Iowa State bottled up the Baylor offense and started getting pressure on Bohanon, which lead to a fumble the Bears recovered.

The difference was made in this fashion:

Saying the glass is half-empty is maybe a little rough, and I believe I’ve targeted the Bears two weeks in a row for this award, but I’m really just cautioning against overreactions at this point.

They’re playing solid, complementary football but Iowa State out-gained them 479-282, picked up 27 first downs to Baylor’s 15, and were one special teams gaffe, one turnover, or a better two-point conversion call away from escaping from Waco with a win. They built a lead early with a double move deep pass by Bohanon (fantastic play and great throw) and some early scripted success in the passing game. Once the script ran out, the offense was grounded to a halt.

Baylor will clearly be in the hunt for the Big 12 Championship through at least October and are currently 2-0 in Big 12 play. However, they’re next up to travel to Stillwater and play Mike Gundy’s Cowboys and the final week of October starts a stretch for them which goes as follows:

  • Texas
  • at TCU
  • Oklahoma
  • at Kansas State
  • Texas Tech

They’ll need to add more dimensions on offense to get through the rest of their schedule without taking on water. All that said, the Bears are off to a fantastic start.

Oklahoma blues and the Gundy special

“We want Caleb!”

Those chants showered Spencer Rattler as the Sooners struggled through a game in which they didn’t hold a lead over West Virginia until the clock read 00:00 and their winning points were the 14th, 15th, and 16th.

I’ve detailed Oklahoma’s run game woes pretty extensively here but I may have overlooked a couple of factors. One is Lincoln Riley has been extremely judicious in running the ball, even when it’s available. He clearly feels more comfortable moving the ball through the air for small gains. This actually communicates a certain level of trust in Spencer Rattler, who was asked to set up the Sooners in position to kick the game-winning field goal primarily with the passing game.

Rattler went 6-6 on the winning drive throwing for 54 yards at nine ypa with four of those picking up first downs.

Oklahoma had some big trouble with Dante Stills and Akheem Mesidor, both in the run game and protection, but at this point I’m also waiting for Kennedy Brooks to break out later in the year and to hear a “well, he’s finally healthy” quote about him. Meanwhile, the Sooners keep stacking wins as they work to solve all their issues.

How well Spencer Rattler handles all this pressure will be fascinating, thus far he’s been pretty steadfast. Switching to Caleb Williams would be a ploy for getting back to running the football and doing so with quarterback run-read schemes. I think this would be a waste not only of Rattler’s talents, but those of Marvin Mims, Jadon Haselwood, Austin Stogner, and Drake Stoops.

As for the other Oklahoma school, what a performance they put on against K-State. They have holes on their team we can talk about, but here are a couple of interesting plays.

Gundy is a maestro of space warfare almost comparable to Darth Mullen himself. The 4×1 unbalanced set is hard on the flyover defense, which normally protects the inside linebackers from needing to play with depth and the second play illustrates the need for a thumper at middle safety. T.J. Smith for Kansas State isn’t Isheem Young and was victimized on both of these plays.

They have a lot of ways to get Jaylen Warren and Brennan Presley in space and Spencer Sanders’ running ability and arm strength has always made it easy to exacerbate spatial stress. With competent O-line play and a good ancillary, both of which they have received of late, this offense can cause problems. Pressley, Warren, and Sanders in space all have a knack for generating big plays which can cover a multitude of sins.

K-State should have had a better showing on offense but they dialed up a lot of shot plays to attack the Cowboy secondary 1-on-1 and Will Howard wasn’t accurate enough to connect, so they pulled him for Jaren Lewis. The youngster wasn’t really up for the moment and threw a pick in the red zone. I would have leaned more on the option run game with Howard but it was tough sledding with OSU loading the box and the Cowboys had some good plays in run defense.

Who won Week 4 in the Big 12?

How many of you have heard of Jeff Traylor? Expect that number to increase come December.

He was the head coach for the Gilmer Buckeyes (East Texas high school) for a while and won a State Championship in 2014 with Kris Boyd (Texas) and Blake Lynch (Baylor).

From there he was poached to be a part of Charlie Strong’s staff at Texas. He was an ace recruiter there and helped the Longhorns establish a strong spread run game with physical ancillaries, particularly in 2016 when they hired Veer and Shoot offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert and offensive line coach Matt Mattox from Tulsa. Tom Herman didn’t retain him so Chad Morris made him a key part of his staff at SMU and then Arkansas, from there he’d done enough as a recruiter despite being attached to losing programs for UTSA to give him their head job.

What he’s doing down there is impressive.

They went 7-5 last year with single-score losses to BYU (27-20) and Louisiana (31-24 in the First Responder Bowl). Then they added a ton of transfers and are now 4-0 with wins over Illinois and Memphis. You can count on them winning 10 games this season and if you follow him you’ll see the extent to which he’s helped build out the UTSA program. Facilities upgrade, local excitement and support, and improved recruiting have all come to San Antonio. They run the ball very effectively and Mattox has rejoined him in building out their attack.

Meanwhile…Texas Tech loses big, TCU blows it against SMU for the second time in a row, and Houston is 3-1 but with the meat of their schedule still ahead. Traylor will surely be getting some phone calls and interest from the Big 12 (perhaps elsewhere also) come December.

What’d you make of the Week 4 results in the Big 12? Join the discussion for free on the Flyover Football Board.

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