Houston Game
Is this our best win? I guess it is. But in terms of a team's strength from a betting market perspective, Iowa State is the best team we've beaten in a long, long time. Regardless, Tech picked up a big and much needed win to open the season against a UH team that still hasn't lost since.
Tech was terrible this year from a turnover perspective. We forced a turnover on only 1% of Big 12 plays (dead last in the conference). But against UH, thankfully, we forced one on 5.5% of UH's snaps. It won us the game.
Three themes emerged from this game re: Tech's offense: (1) unlike the last 20+ seasons, where Tech often ran the most plays per game, Tech was going to run very, very few plays per game, (2) this one is a cause of (1), but this offense had very real explosive play capabilities and (3) our OL was going to have problems blocking people. Those long explosive plays saved the season in a lot of ways and, along with winning the TO battle, won the UH game for us.
A defensive theme that emerged from this game was Tech having a very capable front 7 at stopping the run (minus the two obvious games). Dana never seemed to realize it, though, attempting 35 runs for only 77 yards. Against a non-powder puff team, this was one of the best performances against the run for Tech's defense in a long, long time.
A defensive theme that was present against UH but disappeared the rest of the season was our mirage of depth. We had depth on the defense in certain areas. It's just that playing our depth caused us to allow a TD every possession (at least, that's what I took away from Keith Patterson pressers). Adrian Frye played almost 90% of our snaps in this game. That amount would decrease substantially, with him only playing approximately 5% in our games against Ok. State and Baylor. Bouyer-Randle played 58 out of 74 snaps against UH, including a big deflection that lead to a key interception. He would only play 48 more snaps from week 6 (TCU) on. Bizarre....
Ultimately, this game was freaking humongous for our season, considering we finished with 6 wins and fell to as low as an 11% win probability in it per ESPN when punting down 7-21. Credit also to the defense and Erik Ezukanma for pulling this one out.
UT/TCU
I will never truly understand what happened to our defense in these games. For 10 weeks this season, Tech's run defense was as good as we've seen around here post-Leach. But in these 2 games, it was as bad as it possibly could have been. You all know that. No need to re-hash.
WVU Road Win
Maybe the most impressive win of the season, in terms of who we were missing, playing in Morgantown, and the spot this was for WVU. At 2-2 & with road trips to BU and TCU looming, this was must win territory for WVU and Neal Brown. Tech had just allowed one billion yards rushing to UT, and WVU had looked really good in Norman the week before. Tech was without EzE, its starting center and starting right tackle. We were playing our back-up, soon-to-be third string QB, in Colombi. During the game, we lost so many DBs that Nate Floyd and Cam Watts had to finish the game.
But we pulled it out on a Garibay game winner.
One of my all time favorite Tech football players, Colin Schooler, had a huge strip sack playing a position he was recently moved to. Colombi played pretty dang well also. We played our top 3 best halves of the season in the 1H (K-State 1H and Iowa State 1H in the mix), capped off by a perfectly executed FG as the clock expired.
Kaylon Geiger has a claim on the winning play when he did something that he did all year -- make a play to win a 50/50 ball on our last FG drive. Geiger's season will probably be forgotten as time goes on, but he was a dude this year for us. WR is a position we need to tap the transfer portal for every season. It's a spot that we can insert guys into productive roles, fairly easily.
This was the emergence of Dadrian Taylor, who might be pretty good next year.
Kansas
Kansas figured some things out late this year, but not against this Tech team. Destroyed them.
KSU
Tech *should've* won this game, but only because we schemed up some big explosive runs in the first half and K-State tried to give it away. Still... if we catch a punt instead of letting it roll to the one, not allow a safety, or don't have a huge personal foul penalty on 3rd and 34, we probably win this game. Only one of those things had to go our way.
Iowa State
As mentioned above, this is probably the best team that Tech has beaten since.. IDK... that Arizona State team in the 2013 Holiday bowl? I understand they have a mediocre record, but Iowa State was damn good this year, and was deservedly a 12-point favorite for a night game in the Jones.
This was the Donovan Smith and Cumbie show + adequate defensive play + the longest game winning FG in the history of college football. It was a magical night that probably only happens 1 time if we played them 10 times.
Oklahoma State
Their defense was really, really good, but we saw why Donovan Smith entered this season 3rd string. There are some accuracy issues with him, but not anything that can't be corrected. Our OL wasn't good enough to give us a chance even if Donovan played well.
Baylor
Bizarre game. The turnover bug hit us again. It was a microcosm of our defense the entire year -- good to great run defense, but a QB that was allowed to dink and dunk all over the field. That was the real weakness of our defense, and we saw SFA and K-State and UH do it as well. We need to get a little more athletic at certain spots on our defense next year (LB and S) in order to cover guys over the middle of the field. It would also be nice to have one of those things that everyone else has that try to get behind the other team's offensive tackles and make physical contact with the QB before he can throw it. I don't even know what those things are called anymore since we haven't had one in forever.
The game was bizarre though because it seemed like all the high leverage plays went against Tech and we still had a chance of tying it. I still don't know what Storment did to get a personal foul. We didn't execute a pooch kick that allowed BU to have the field position necessary to go for it on 4th and 4 late when they otherwise wouldn't. In classic fashion, we called a perfect defense and had great coverage on that 4th and 4, but BU's freshman QB made a heroic pass into traffic. BU's wide receiver makes an all-time great interception break up on what could've been a pick six.
And yet... with the game on the line, Sonny Cumbie goes full cheat code and calls a great TE screen that springs Koontz for a 75 yard TD. And then Colin Schooler goes full Rambo gets the ball back to Tech's offense on a 4th and 1 play-action pass that he diagnosed like he had Coach McGuire in his ear on a bluetooth device.
When the game was in the balance -- i.e., before Tech was down two scores with 10 minutes left -- we had thrown it on only about 1/3 of our snaps. As a 14-point dog and playing one of the better run defenses / front 7 in the conference, most would've thought we needed to throw the ball to win. Cumbie probably knew that, too. But that's not what we did. We tried to win that game running the ball, without our "best" RB who fumbled on the first play and never returned. The only reasonable explanation for that, IMO, is that Cumbie did not have faith in Donovan's ability to throw the ball accurately to receivers. It does seem to be a problem with him, but again, not something he can't get better at.
Credit to our OL for protecting Donovan late in the game when we were in obvious passing situation.
Overall
This is just my opinion, but I think this year's team's overall talent was on the high end of Matt Wells' range as a HC. It probably wasn't the best he would've ever put on the field at Tech, but it was pretty dang close. And, sure, while it was better than we've seen in recent years, and while we could've won 7 or 8 games this year, we could've also won 4 or 5.
In the end, we finished tied for last among non-KU teams in the conference, with Tech losing the tiebreaker among those teams. We finished 3rd to last in points allowed per drive (ahead of TCU and KU), and we finished 7th in points scored per drive (ahead of WVU, TCU, and KU).
The results on the field (not win or loss record), but our per-possession production, was about the same as it has been since 2016.
Because of the Tyler Shough injury, we continued a theme of playing our conference schedule with a marked QB disadvantage most of the time we stepped on the field. And we certainly had a huge disadvantage in terms of pass rushers and pass protectors. Those three things have to change. If we can win 6 games with major deficiencies in those 3 areas, while being dead last in the TO battle, we can win 8, 9, or 10 games in the new Big 12, just by shoring up those three areas (QB, pass rushers, pass protection). It may take some time, though.
Is this our best win? I guess it is. But in terms of a team's strength from a betting market perspective, Iowa State is the best team we've beaten in a long, long time. Regardless, Tech picked up a big and much needed win to open the season against a UH team that still hasn't lost since.
Tech was terrible this year from a turnover perspective. We forced a turnover on only 1% of Big 12 plays (dead last in the conference). But against UH, thankfully, we forced one on 5.5% of UH's snaps. It won us the game.
Three themes emerged from this game re: Tech's offense: (1) unlike the last 20+ seasons, where Tech often ran the most plays per game, Tech was going to run very, very few plays per game, (2) this one is a cause of (1), but this offense had very real explosive play capabilities and (3) our OL was going to have problems blocking people. Those long explosive plays saved the season in a lot of ways and, along with winning the TO battle, won the UH game for us.
A defensive theme that emerged from this game was Tech having a very capable front 7 at stopping the run (minus the two obvious games). Dana never seemed to realize it, though, attempting 35 runs for only 77 yards. Against a non-powder puff team, this was one of the best performances against the run for Tech's defense in a long, long time.
A defensive theme that was present against UH but disappeared the rest of the season was our mirage of depth. We had depth on the defense in certain areas. It's just that playing our depth caused us to allow a TD every possession (at least, that's what I took away from Keith Patterson pressers). Adrian Frye played almost 90% of our snaps in this game. That amount would decrease substantially, with him only playing approximately 5% in our games against Ok. State and Baylor. Bouyer-Randle played 58 out of 74 snaps against UH, including a big deflection that lead to a key interception. He would only play 48 more snaps from week 6 (TCU) on. Bizarre....
Ultimately, this game was freaking humongous for our season, considering we finished with 6 wins and fell to as low as an 11% win probability in it per ESPN when punting down 7-21. Credit also to the defense and Erik Ezukanma for pulling this one out.
UT/TCU
I will never truly understand what happened to our defense in these games. For 10 weeks this season, Tech's run defense was as good as we've seen around here post-Leach. But in these 2 games, it was as bad as it possibly could have been. You all know that. No need to re-hash.
WVU Road Win
Maybe the most impressive win of the season, in terms of who we were missing, playing in Morgantown, and the spot this was for WVU. At 2-2 & with road trips to BU and TCU looming, this was must win territory for WVU and Neal Brown. Tech had just allowed one billion yards rushing to UT, and WVU had looked really good in Norman the week before. Tech was without EzE, its starting center and starting right tackle. We were playing our back-up, soon-to-be third string QB, in Colombi. During the game, we lost so many DBs that Nate Floyd and Cam Watts had to finish the game.
But we pulled it out on a Garibay game winner.
One of my all time favorite Tech football players, Colin Schooler, had a huge strip sack playing a position he was recently moved to. Colombi played pretty dang well also. We played our top 3 best halves of the season in the 1H (K-State 1H and Iowa State 1H in the mix), capped off by a perfectly executed FG as the clock expired.
Kaylon Geiger has a claim on the winning play when he did something that he did all year -- make a play to win a 50/50 ball on our last FG drive. Geiger's season will probably be forgotten as time goes on, but he was a dude this year for us. WR is a position we need to tap the transfer portal for every season. It's a spot that we can insert guys into productive roles, fairly easily.
This was the emergence of Dadrian Taylor, who might be pretty good next year.
Kansas
Kansas figured some things out late this year, but not against this Tech team. Destroyed them.
KSU
Tech *should've* won this game, but only because we schemed up some big explosive runs in the first half and K-State tried to give it away. Still... if we catch a punt instead of letting it roll to the one, not allow a safety, or don't have a huge personal foul penalty on 3rd and 34, we probably win this game. Only one of those things had to go our way.
Iowa State
As mentioned above, this is probably the best team that Tech has beaten since.. IDK... that Arizona State team in the 2013 Holiday bowl? I understand they have a mediocre record, but Iowa State was damn good this year, and was deservedly a 12-point favorite for a night game in the Jones.
This was the Donovan Smith and Cumbie show + adequate defensive play + the longest game winning FG in the history of college football. It was a magical night that probably only happens 1 time if we played them 10 times.
Oklahoma State
Their defense was really, really good, but we saw why Donovan Smith entered this season 3rd string. There are some accuracy issues with him, but not anything that can't be corrected. Our OL wasn't good enough to give us a chance even if Donovan played well.
Baylor
Bizarre game. The turnover bug hit us again. It was a microcosm of our defense the entire year -- good to great run defense, but a QB that was allowed to dink and dunk all over the field. That was the real weakness of our defense, and we saw SFA and K-State and UH do it as well. We need to get a little more athletic at certain spots on our defense next year (LB and S) in order to cover guys over the middle of the field. It would also be nice to have one of those things that everyone else has that try to get behind the other team's offensive tackles and make physical contact with the QB before he can throw it. I don't even know what those things are called anymore since we haven't had one in forever.
The game was bizarre though because it seemed like all the high leverage plays went against Tech and we still had a chance of tying it. I still don't know what Storment did to get a personal foul. We didn't execute a pooch kick that allowed BU to have the field position necessary to go for it on 4th and 4 late when they otherwise wouldn't. In classic fashion, we called a perfect defense and had great coverage on that 4th and 4, but BU's freshman QB made a heroic pass into traffic. BU's wide receiver makes an all-time great interception break up on what could've been a pick six.
And yet... with the game on the line, Sonny Cumbie goes full cheat code and calls a great TE screen that springs Koontz for a 75 yard TD. And then Colin Schooler goes full Rambo gets the ball back to Tech's offense on a 4th and 1 play-action pass that he diagnosed like he had Coach McGuire in his ear on a bluetooth device.
When the game was in the balance -- i.e., before Tech was down two scores with 10 minutes left -- we had thrown it on only about 1/3 of our snaps. As a 14-point dog and playing one of the better run defenses / front 7 in the conference, most would've thought we needed to throw the ball to win. Cumbie probably knew that, too. But that's not what we did. We tried to win that game running the ball, without our "best" RB who fumbled on the first play and never returned. The only reasonable explanation for that, IMO, is that Cumbie did not have faith in Donovan's ability to throw the ball accurately to receivers. It does seem to be a problem with him, but again, not something he can't get better at.
Credit to our OL for protecting Donovan late in the game when we were in obvious passing situation.
Overall
This is just my opinion, but I think this year's team's overall talent was on the high end of Matt Wells' range as a HC. It probably wasn't the best he would've ever put on the field at Tech, but it was pretty dang close. And, sure, while it was better than we've seen in recent years, and while we could've won 7 or 8 games this year, we could've also won 4 or 5.
In the end, we finished tied for last among non-KU teams in the conference, with Tech losing the tiebreaker among those teams. We finished 3rd to last in points allowed per drive (ahead of TCU and KU), and we finished 7th in points scored per drive (ahead of WVU, TCU, and KU).
The results on the field (not win or loss record), but our per-possession production, was about the same as it has been since 2016.
Because of the Tyler Shough injury, we continued a theme of playing our conference schedule with a marked QB disadvantage most of the time we stepped on the field. And we certainly had a huge disadvantage in terms of pass rushers and pass protectors. Those three things have to change. If we can win 6 games with major deficiencies in those 3 areas, while being dead last in the TO battle, we can win 8, 9, or 10 games in the new Big 12, just by shoring up those three areas (QB, pass rushers, pass protection). It may take some time, though.
