The TCU Horned Frogs play a numbers game this Saturday against the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
Actually, they’re playing more than one numbers game.
11-on-11 is one. 1-on-1 on the perimeter is another. TCU’s offense will try to get the best positional matchups it can find against Oklahoma State’s secondary, which certainly felt under siege last weekend against Texas Tech.
Yet, in a larger context, the numbers game most central to TCU-Oklahoma State is the scoreboard.
“Suuuuuuuuure,” you’re saying. “What brilliant insight, you dumbbell. Scoring more points is the key? I’m clicking the red X on this browser tab and will move on with my life.”
The topic being raised here concerns points, but it’s not so much about scoring more; the question TCU must face is, “How many will be enough to win?” That’s something the Horned Frogs have to be concerned about as they prepare for this sojourn to Stillwater, where Oklahoma State is about to host the first of three mammoth games in November. After welcoming TCU to Boone Pickens Stadium, the Cowboys will host Baylor and Oklahoma. Win all three, and the Pokes will appear in the College Football Playoff. Win two, and OSU will have a chance at the playoff while guaranteeing itself a New Year’s Six slot. The Cowboys would have an excellent chance of winning the Big 12 under that scenario.
Naturally, if winning two out of three ain’t bad, the best way to guarantee such a result is to win the first one so that some margin for error exists on the next two tries. Oklahoma State came back from a 15-point deficit to beat Kansas State. Mike Gundy’s team won in overtime against West Virginia and broke a late-game tie at Texas. The Cowboys came back from a 17-point deficit to beat Texas Tech. They are the best high-wire act in college football. They’ll be a tough opponent to shake on their home field this Saturday afternoon.
The question concerning TCU, then, is this: In the face of such a resilient opponent, can the Horned Frogs manage to win a Big 12 road game of considerable weight when scoring fewer than 40 points? That’s not a typical everyday football question. It’s not something we’re used to asking as pundits or commentators. Yet, it seems to be an entirely relevant query in the days leading up to Frogs-Pokes.
Remember this Price Is Right game?
The TCU fan base doesn’t want the climber or the yoodling in the background to stop. The Horned Frogs don’t want a limit as the number goes from 25 to 35 to 45 to 50 to 55. TCU needed to score 53 points to beat Texas Tech (and scored 55). The Horned Frogs needed 46 to beat Kansas State (and scored 52). All the injuries and other roster dislocations this team has suffered on defense (with some offensive injuries added to the mix) have forced TCU to walk into hostile Big 12 stadiums usually knowing that if at least 40 points aren’t scored, trouble looms. The road trip to Iowa State wasn’t daunting, but every other one either has been or will be.
This weekend in Stillwater, does the “rule of 40” still apply? It doesn’t just have a lot to say about this game; the rule of 40 — perhaps also known as the famous American presidential campaign slogan “54-40 or Fight!” — will tell us what TCU is made of.
College football offers many lessons within the course of a single season. One of them is that in November, bad habits which persisted throughout the previous two months — tendencies which were never fully weeded out — often come back to bite teams in the backside. Such is the feeling with TCU’s defense, which played well against West Virginia last week, but has not yet shown it can contain a high-quality quarterback, especially in a road game.
Mitch Leidner of Minnesota (week one) isn’t a high-quality quarterback.
Iowa State does not possess a high-quality quarterback. Neither does Texas.
Mason Rudolph of Oklahoma State exists in a different league compared to Minnesota and Iowa State. He’s been a comeback artist this season, and he has mastered the fourth quarter. This point raises the obvious but necessary question: If Trevone Boykin is even slightly off his game, to the extent that TCU scores “only” 38 points on Saturday, will that modest drop in production sink the Frogs? If Boykin makes just one conspicuous mistake, will TCU’s margin for error vanish in Stillwater?
TCU just isn’t deep enough on defense to shut down Oklahoma State. The good news is that the Frogs, with their offense, shouldn’t have to feel they must smother the Cowboys. If we’re asking the “cliffhanger question” and playing that Price Is Right game from a TCU perspective, the Frogs and their fans would probably be ecstatic if you told them right now that OSU’s mountain climber would stop at 31. Anything that low would very likely translate to a Horned Frog victory. Conversely, anything over 50 for Oklahoma State would likely mean a Cowboy win; TCU would buck the odds if it won a third game this season in which the defense gave up 45 points or more.
Where I see the most intrigue on Saturday, then, is in the upper 30s. We are not conditioned as a football culture to the idea that 38 points won’t be good enough to win. In this game, however, 38 does feel more like a losing number than a winning one.
Many of the questions being asked here certainly apply to the Cowboys. However, since TCU gained national publicity in 2014 and fell short of the College Football Playoff because 58 points were not enough to win the most significant game of the regular season, the Horned Frogs represent the more fascinating case study. Trevone Boykin has carried this team on his shoulders so far, but if he’s anything less than his best, can his teammates pick him up this one time? That question relates to the numbers game and the “cliffhanger” identity of Saturday’s clash.
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I’m reminded of the 1998 Minnesota Vikings here.
Recall the NFC Championship Game in January of 1999 between the Vikings and the Atlanta Falcons. Gary Anderson, one of the great kickers of all time, was finishing what should still be considered one of the two or three best seasons by a placekicker in the history of professional football. Anderson had not missed a single kick all season, and with Minnesota leading Atlanta by seven in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, a 39-yard field goal by Anderson would have sealed a victory and propelled the Vikings to their fifth Super Bowl appearance.
Anderson, however, missed, and while the kick was a choke job, it’s not as though Anderson let down his teammates. The man was literally perfect until that point in the 1998 season, through 17.98 games. Could his defense and his teammates find it within themselves to have their kicker’s back, or would that one mistake cause the Vikings to lose their dream?
In short order, everyone found the answer: The dream died because the defense couldn’t hold the Falcons at the end of regulation or in overtime. Gary Anderson did choke, but his teammates couldn’t cover for him the one time he made a mistake in that 1998 season.
As the scene shifts to Stillwater, Oklahoma, this Saturday afternoon, another team in purple has to confront the question: If its star quarterback makes a mistake or two, will the TCU defense have Trevone Boykin’s back? Great teams will answer yes. Great teams which will make it to the final championship destination of a long football season will cover for their teammate.
Maybe Boykin will once again manifest his magic — in that case, TCU has nothing to worry about.
However, November exposes college teams who have been living on the edge or getting away with bad tendencies for portions of the season (or both).
TCU doesn’t have to shut down Oklahoma State, but can it survive yet another shootout, or will the odds catch up with the Frogs? Such is life in the cliffhanger world the Big 12 Conference has become.
