Offensively it looked like they were continuing their downward trend in the second half after a solid 1st half, but they finished the game by gaining 137 yards and scoring 9 points on the final two possessions. There's only one word to describe that: clutch. And it was the perfect way to cap a dominant performance on the ground by George...er um, D'Onta Foreman. He keeps this up and he'll be the first Doak Walker award winner from UT since Benson did it in 2004. Defense got worked over again for the majority of the game, but they did deliver a couple crucial stops, one in particular that gets overlooked because Baylor still got points off of it. Their idiotic decision to run on 3rd and Goal at the 5 with around 9 minutes to go in the game proved to be every bit as fatal as the fumble on the possession before. In fact if you look at Baylor's possessions in the 4th quarter relative to what they'd done in the previous 3, you realize how horribly they self-destructed. They had 4 possessions in that quarter (if you count the continuation from the drive that started at the end of the 3rd) and went like this: Drive 1: Fumble in the green zone Drive 2: Held to a field goal on a down series that started First and Goal at the UT 6 Drive 3: Had to punt on a down series that started First and 10 at the UT 29 because Seth Russell grounded the ball and took them out of FG range Drive 4: The game-ending possession that was doomed from the start as UT's DL overwhelmed the Baylor OL on 2 crucial plays: tackling Russell in the field of play on first down when they had no TO's and sacking him on second down. By that point Baylor was dead because they forced into deep-pass mode against a prevent defense with a running clock, which is the worst position an offense can be in. So they were in a position to score at least 17, if not 21, and were held to 3. Damn Special Teams: 5/10 sums up this unit to a T. They giveth, and they taketh away. They giveth by not allowing mega-huge returns and they've improved on the disaster plays (fumbles, muffs, and blocked kicks), but the return units do not help the offense at all (especially PR's) and the penalties are just a headache. I forgot who it was but there was a KO return that was fielded 3-4 yards deep and the guy decided to run it out and, predictably, got smacked at the 10 yard line. Guess the Big 12 isn't going playoff-ing again. What a shame.
Those two points turned out to be the difference in the game. Malik also scored 6 points on that fumble recovery return for TD even though the fickle finger of the referee declared the QB down by forward progress. You know if the QB had broken that tackle and picked up yards, it would have been declared still a live ball.
Coaching grade "Meh" End of the first half. Baylor runs and gets tackled in bounds. 15 seconds are left, the clock is running. Baylor doesn't have a timeout. They are scrambling to line up. They don't have a play called. They don't know what they are doing. WTF, WE CALL TIME OUT FOR THEM!?!?!?!?! C'MON MAN! 4th quarter. We have the ball down 2. It's 3rd and 3. We are just inside field goal range. It would be nice to get a few more yards to make the field goal easier, and a first down would let us milk all the clock down so Baylor wouldn't get the ball back. I'm thinking it has to go to Foreman on a downhill run even if they know it's coming. What do we do? Shotgun snap to the QB who then runs perfectly sideways for a 4 yard loss. C'MON MAN! I could list more, but meh. We won in spite of it all.
It was the strangest game I have ever attended but we won and I'll take it! This win means we are 4-0 at home and 4-1 in games I have attended (OU). It also means my worst case is finishing 4-3 in games I have attended this season, so it is nice to have a winning record in a down year.
Part of me believes that Strong called this under the mistaken assumption that Baylor had no timeouts. If that was the case the call made sense because he was tackled with 48 seconds remaining, which would have pulled the clock down to :09 left before we call the TO. But yeah given that they actually had a TO left, it was a horrendous call.
There is no way on earth he was thinking about that. Even if he was, it was still dumb. If we run a downhill run instead, and they don't have a timeout, who cares if the clock runs down to 13 seconds or 9 seconds before the FG attempt. We have a suspect FG kicker...every yard matters more than 4 seconds. Get the first down and it doesn't matter at all. Milk it to 3 seconds before the attempt. Plus there is a Godzilla sized thing right by him that has a digit the size of a human being indicating the timeouts Baylor had. Thankfully we made the FG anyway. A missed FG there and the resulting loss could be pinned directly to a coaching blunder. These things matter. It didn't cost us the game this week, but C'MON MAN!
It looked like both 1st and 2nd down were QB draws which seemed a bit odd to me, but given how his running had gashed our D all night long, maybe it made sense.
To do that you have to take one out of pass defense. Do you want to be killed by the run or the pass? (Or like Saturday almost both.)
