Forget that boring Wisconsin-UNLV game. Ignore Syracuse’s petty overtime win over Wake. And for the love of God, let’s all try and pretend Kentucky-Western Kentucky never happened.
Nope folks, college football- the real college football that we know and love, the one with the cheerleaders, and Lee Corso riding motorcyles, and wild upsets- got underway last night. And it happened with Baylor’s 50-48 win over TCU. Just like that folks, the season is here.
With a few hours to reflect, there are two easy narratives to write about last night’s thriller, which, when all is said and done, might go down as the best game of the 2011 season. Those narratives of course are, “Baylor’s really good,” and “TCU really sucks.” Neither is entirely fair.
For Baylor, simply put, they are better than any of us could have imagined. If last night showed us anything, it’s that Art Briles has things rolling in year four in Waco, and that he has a surprisingly talented football team. Obviously most college football fans already knew about Robert Griffin III. As Rod Gilmore mentioned in last night’s broadcast (and I’m paraphrasing) “With all due respect to Michael Vick, Robert Griffin is the best athlete playing quarterback in college football right now.” And most casual fans even knew about Kendall Wright, who has had 50 receptions per year, in each of his three years in Waco. There might not be a more underrated receiver in all of college football.
What amazed me as a totally neutral observer though, was how good everyone else on the Bears roster was. Baylor has so much speed on both sides of the ball, it was almost dumbfounding. On offense they made a TCU defense built for speed play on their heels all night, and on defense themselves, Baylor’s closing speed on the edge was phenomenal. Yes the Bears missed some open-field tackles, and yes they got pushed around up front (the interior defensive line seems to be Baylor’s biggest weakness. Which makes sense, since they lost Phil Taylor to the NFL). But tackling can be fixed. You can’t teach speed, which Baylor has a mesmerizing amount of right now.
As a matter of fact, going forward, Baylor’s biggest hurdle isn’t talent; it’s believing that they’re a winning football team. It takes time to build a winner, and even longer to build a winning culture, and Baylor fans learned that the hard way last night. As good as the Bears were for three quarters Friday, it all was nearly for nothing with an epic fourth quarter collapse. Up 47-23, TCU scored 25 straight points, before an Aaron Lewis field goal proved to be the difference. Closing out wins (when they don’t have nearly as comfortable a lead) will be Baylor’s biggest task this season. I firmly believe with the right breaks, and if they play like they did in the first three quarters yesterday, this can be a 9-3 football team. But if they don’t have the confidence to finish in the fourth quarter, 7-5 is probably more realistic.
As for TCU, well I think we all knew they’d take some kind of step back this season (Personally, I had them ranked No. 23 in my preseason poll). At the same time, most everyone expected their struggles to come on offense, where soon-to-be Cincinnati Bengals starter Andy Dalton was set to be replaced by the Stephen Garcia-looking Casey Pachall under center. The Horned Frogs also had to replace a handful of starters on the offensive line, and top receiver/return man Jeremy Kerley.
What no one expected however, was for TCU’s defense to look like…that. It’s one thing to be inexperienced, but it’s another to be overwhelmed, and that’s what TCU was Friday. Even the return of first team All-Badass Tank Carder and his running mate at linebacker Tanner Brock wasn’t enough, as an inexperienced defensive line got pushed around by Baylor’s veterans up front, and their defensive backs repeatedly…repeatedly got burned deep. Yes Griffin put some throws right on the money, but Baylor wouldn’t have scored all those points if Wright (12 catches, 186 yards) and Terrence Williams (six catches, 126 yards) didn’t beat their defender to the spot, make the catch, and in some cases, burn them downfield for the score. As Yahoo’s Matt Hinton pointed out, TCU’s defense wasn’t bad, it was historically awful, at least relative to the rest of the Gary Patterson era. The Horned Frogs haven’t given up 500 yards of total offense since September 2005, when a lot of the players on the field Friday night were in middle school. The 565 was double the 228 they gave up a game last year, and that was with Baylor essentially taking their foot off the gas in the fourth quarter.
But the truth is, before we go throwing the dirt on TCU’s grave, it’s hard not to see them winning most of the games on the rest of their schedule.
As I mentioned earlier, Baylor’s speed on both sides of the ball was simply mesmerizing…but TCU’s wasn’t all that far behind. Skye Dawson, Wayman James and Matthew Tucker all looked capable running under center, with Dawson (who is primarily a receiver), Josh Boyce and Logan Brock can handle things on the outside. And that doesn’t even factor in that TCU’s best running back Ed Wesley, missed most of the game because of injury.
Add that in with Pachall, who was was fearless late in the game (and really, when you have that many tattoos, how can you not be?), and remember that the defense probably won’t face an offense that explosive the rest of the season, all of a sudden, there’s not nearly the same doom and gloom in Fort Worth. I’d pegged TCU as a 10-2 team before the season, and firmly believe that’s right around where they’ll finish up.
Nope, Baylor isn’t quite as good as they looked last night, but TCU isn’t nearly as bad either.
But no matter how you feel about the two, one thing is clear: College football, finally, mercifully, is back!
For updates on late-breaking news, opinion and everything else in the world of college football, follow Crystal Ball Run on Twitter @CrystalBallRun.
Follow Aaron Torres on Twitter @Aaron_Torres.
