1. Some of Those Penalties Were Horseshit. I don’t really ever complain about officials or penalties (what, maybe once a year?), and I realize that it’s Sunday morning and the first thing you’re normally reading isn’t the word “horseshit” but the roughing the passer on Joe Wallace and on Eli Howard were just devastatingly terrible and to be without one of your top defenders, Jordyn Brooks, for a targeting call seemed egregious too. I also thought the Vaughnte Dorsey penalty was just not good either. It was just too much to overcome. And this isn’t to say that Texas Tech didn’t have their own mistakes that cost them this game, they certainly did, but it is incredibly tough to overcome those penalties and losing one of your best players (not just defender, Books is one of your best players).
2. Defense Did Your Job. Hats off to the defensive players. You played your asses off and Texas Tech isn’t in this game without your contributions. A touchdown, another turnover. Multiple huge plays. Multiple three-and-outs. The defense kept Texas Tech in this game despite the offense, and right up and until the end, the defense had confounded Iowa State to where their offense struggled where 6 of their 17 drives were the result of a punt, a missed field goal, and a fumble recovery for a touchdown. We’ll get to this in a second, but the biggest difference in the game was the fact that Iowa State held onto the ball for 10:30 in the 4th quarter. And the defense forced 3 punts, had a fumble recovery for a touchdown and eventually allowed a touchdown. That’s standing on the wall and not backing down.
3. The Offense Was Terrible: Part I. this is a two-part series, unfortunately. Without a doubt, at least for me, this was the worst game of Alan Bowman’s young career. I had a fear before the game that this would be similar to an indoctrination like TCU used to do against young quarterbacks. Just chew you up and spit you out. Bowman completed 57% of his passes with 5.8 yards per completion, 1 touchdown (a large credit of that touchdown goes to Antoine Wesley) and 3 interceptions. One interception gets returned for a pick-six. A intentional grounding in your own end zone results in giving Iowa State the lead (you can listen how ticked Kingsbury was at that play, essentially saying that Bowman shouldn’t have a problem with simple stuff) and another interception that allowed Iowa State to then go up by 9. That’s a disaster of a day and it’s not all on Bowman, the running game was pretty terrible (that’s part II). I remember writing after the Ole Miss game that I thought that Bowman threw off of his back foot too much and that some of his passes really floated, ripe for an interception. After Bowman’s start since that Ole Miss game, has been nothing but fantastic, but I thought last week wasn’t great (Remember, I somewhat complained about a 400 yard performance? Stating that how lucky are we that I’m sitting here nit-picking about things? And Kingsbury said after the game that the offense hasn’t been right in a few games.) Well, this was a definite step back and Kingsbury sounded as irritated as I can recall, rightfully so, and he took the blame for the offense, but he also said that there should be an expectation of Bowman being able to execute the simple stuff and not throw the ball to the team in the other jersey. I don’t know what will happen against Oklahoma, I’d guess that Kingsbury stays with Bowman, but this is going to be the game plan, flood the secondary and let Bowman make mistakes. Bowman’s job is to make teams pay for that sort of play.
4. The Offense Was Terrible: Part II. Here we go. 24 rushing attempts. 30 rushing yards. 1.3 yards per attempt. I’ll say this, in a normal Kingsbury situation, he would have abandoned the run after 10 of those for no gain, but I’ll give him credit for sticking with it, but those numbers are an abject failure of execution on the offensive line. The blocking was suspect at best, obviously, and those numbers aren’t entirely accurate. Bowman had 29 positve rushing yards and also lost 25, both of them coming off of sacks, so if you didn’t want to count sacks, that’s 58 yards gained on 27 attempts that’s 2.1 yards per carry. That’s still terrible and the frustrating thing for those in the “Jett Duffey Should Start” campaign is that there were a lot of yards out there for Bowman to grab like he did in the second half. But Bowman just didn’t take them or it was something that was pointed out at halftime, that they were there for the taking. Yes, Duffey would have feasted had he been presented the same thing, but that simplicity takes a lot of variables out of the equation, namely that Iowa State would have adjusted in some form or fashion. It wouldn’t have been that easy and I’d guess that Iowa State would have essentially brought every safety up front and not worried about any deep passes. Every defender would have been within 15 yards of the line of scrimmage.
What happens next week? I don’t know. There’s pros and cons of each and I’m guessing that Kingsbury sticks with Bowman. Iowa State is a very good defense, top 30 for sure and probably even better at home. Oklahoma is not a good defense and I’m guessing that if Bowman struggles against the Sooners he’ll have to make a decision early because the Sooner offense is elite. Straight up elite, so if Texas Tech falls behind early or just doesn’t put points on the board, then you’ll get lapped before you can blink. I think Kingsbury knows he can’t let that happen.
5. Dive Into the Defensive Details. How about 6 tackles for a loss for 25 yards, 3 sacks, a forced fumble for a recovery in the end zone and a touchdown, 3 quarterback hurries. I thought Joe Wallace, 4 tackles, 1 sack, Broderick Washington, 5 tackles, Vaughnte Dorsey, 8 tackles, , Jah’Shawn Johnson 8 tackles, 1 sack, and Riko Jeffers, 11 tackles, 1 sack, 1 forced fumble, and general awesomeness once Books went out. We’ll get to Dakota Allen in a bit, but I thought those guys played outstanding. And I feel a bit bad for Johnson, who could have had an interception had that ball that bounced deep and ended up being completed (threw into triple coverage and still completed it). This team is playing plenty good on defense to stick in games. Oh, and I thought Justus Parker played much better this game, maybe the best game of the year, just sticks it came 8 games into the season. I hope that trend continues.
6. Receiver Play. I thought that Kingsbury, knowing that throwing to the sideline for Wesley wasn’t going to be effective and he had Wesley, his best receiver, drag across the middle on a handful of his routes and I thought that worked really well. That’s a huge target for Bowman and I thought Bowman did do a good job of finding him, especially for the touchdown. It was a dangerous throw, off the back foot again (I think) and in double-coverage, but Wesley made it happen. And I don’t want to sound like I’m taking away from what Bowman did, sometimes you have to take chances and he did and I’m glad for it. Ja’Deion High had 6 catches for 70 yards and I thought he played really well, catching 6 of his 8 targets. Also playing really well was the running backs catching the ball out of the backfield. Da’Leon Ward and Tah’Zhawn Henry sometimes just got clobbered on some of those screens, Ward caught 7 of 8 and Henry caught 3 of 5. Henry is going to be the truth before long.
7. Special Teams. Another very solid performance for the special teams. Scratch that. Any time that you score a mother hubbard touchdown on a blocked punt, that’s fantastic. Standing clap for the special teams. Thomas Legget with the blocked punt and the scoop for the touchdown. Clayton Hatfield made his only field goal. Dominic Panazzolo had 7 punts and 6 of them were downed inside the 20 with one going 56 yards. Panazzolo has been on a roll and playing his tail off. The kickoff coverage team did allow a huge return late in the game, but giving the offense 7 points, the punting, the touchbacks, etc. really sort of out-weigh that for me. Huge kudos to Adam Scheier for working hard and getting some serious production from the special teams. I think there’s been some excellent improvement here.
8. Game Iconography.
Tortilla Tossin’ Player of the Game: Dakota Allen. We are going to miss you significantly next year. 16 tackles, 1 TFL, a fumble recovery in the end zone for a touchdown. All over the field and played absolutely superbly.
Guns Up Offensive MVP: Antoine Wesley gets the nod from me, nearly 15 yards per catch and the lone receiving touchdown. He’s growing into the guy who changes the math, were that was previously T.J. Vasher. Defensive coordinators are taking note and I think Kingsbury is too.
Sheriff Star Defensive MVP: Riko Jeffers in a back-up role was also truly superb, 11 tackles, 1 sack and I don’t know what Gibbs does with Jeffers next year in that he could put him on the edge or he could just leave him at linebacker. Either way, he’s a special player.
9. Quotes.
There was no quote sheet so all credit to the A-J Media and will link as indicated. A-J Media’s Don Williams:
Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury was looking down at his play sheet for the next play and said there was nothing complicated about the play-action call that ended in disaster.
“Fake it and then run a naked (bootleg) and throw it to the guy that’s open,” he said. “But that’s the type of day it was: just simple stuff that we couldn’t execute.”
/snip/
“I’ve got to get them right,” Kingsbury said, “because the last two weeks haven’t been very good offensively. Just the little details you’ve got to execute over and over in this league to be successful, they haven’t been there. That’s coaching.”
The freshman quarterback finished with 323 yards on 32-for-56 passing, but with only one touchdown. And ISU stonewalled the running game, allowing Tech 30 yards on 24 carries.
“I didn’t do a good job of giving Alan answers,” Kingsbury said, “and we didn’t run the football, so we leaned on him more than we wanted to against a tough defense that covers well and had a good pass rush. I needed to have better answers for him.”
Five of the penalties helped Iowa State score 17 points. Among them were a targeting call on Jordyn Brooks, roughing the passer on Eli Howard, unnecessary roughness on Vaughnte Dorsey, hands to the face against Broderick Washington and defensive holding on Joseph Wallace.
“I’ll have to see the tape, but it seemed like there were a bunch called on us,” Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury said. “And some just lack of discipline, late hits, things like that on the quarterback, you can’t do that. You know they’re going to protect the quarterback at all costs. We’ve got to learn our lesson and not extend (opponents’) drives.”
10. Final Thoughts & La Yapa.
- I seemingly don’t address the situation where Kingsbury is at fault for the offense and that’s not the case. I think Kingsbury’s words speak for him quite well and I’ve always found it difficult to criticize play-calling because I think that for a large part it is difficult to tell the play called and the option chosen by the quarterback. There’s a lot on the quarterback’s shoulders and I think that’s always been the case with how Kingsbury coaches. Kingsbury accepts fault, for not having the quarterbacks ready and playing at a high level. His expectation, I think, is perfection and anything short of that is something to take back to the drawing board.
- Wait. TCU lost to Kansas? Kansas won a football game?
- 10 penalties for 105 yards. What a gut punch.
- Texas Tech really struggled on third downs, converting only 38%, 6 of 17. In fact, Texas Tech was really in a third and medium for nearly all third downs as the third down distance was 6.8 yards. And just as an FYI, the defense held Iowa State to 44% and their average distance was 7.9 yards.
- I think I am just as disappointed in the offensive line as I am with anything else. I think they’ll have to be significantly better and just have to do a better job of getting a push and getting a body on a defender. The running backs just had no opportunity to run and that’s a credit to the Iowa State defense, but this was borderline ridiculous.
- I had a long day of soccer and other things and didn’t get to watch the game until late and didn’t track the offense. I started to do it, but it’s such a long process, I needed to get the game under my belt so I could move onto other things. A lot of 11 and 20 personnel on 1st and 2nd down with third downs and 4+ were almost always 10 personnel. I am beginning to wonder why Donta Thompson even goes out in a route because neither quarterback has looked his way this year. It’s so strange to see him fire off the line of scrimmage time and time again and he’s got 1 catch for 11 yards (the catch was against Lamar). We don’t get to see the camera angle to tell if he’s even open, it’s just funny to watch, and this isn’t about Bowman or Duffey, neither one of them are looking his way, but he does see more snaps with Bowman in the game.