To some, TCU’s defense may be like an episode of “Mission: Impossible.”
Do you accept the challenge?
The Horned Frogs load up the box against the run, leave their cornerbacks in man coverage more often than not and see if teams can unload deep before the front four applies pressure.
Colorado State did so Saturday at Lubick Field at Hughes Stadium, but at the game’s crucial point, the ball, and possibly the game — not a tape recording — disintegrated from the Rams’ grasp.
CSU (3-3 overall, 1-1 in the MWC) dropped not one, but two, sure touchdown passes in one drive near the end of the first half. That left the Rams with a 13-7 deficit, and that’s the way it stood at the end of the day.
“For us to win a game like this, we have to make a few more plays, particularly throwing the ball down field,”
said CSU head coach Steve Fairchild. “We did not get that done.”
The throws were there from Billy Farris. What wasn’t was the catch, by either Kory Sperry or Rashaun Greer.
Sperry, who made a clutch catch on the Rams’ game-winning drive last week, had a deep ball go through his hands and bounce off his shoulder pads on a first-down call. Two plays later, Greer — second in the nation with 114 receiving yards a game and coming off an eight-catch, 211-yard performance last week — dropped one two plays later that hit him right in the hands.
“It was a mistake on my part, more so than Kory,”
said Greer, who finished without a reception for the first time this season. “I should have caught the ball, and that would have changed the whole outcome of the game. It hurts. It’s something you can’t dwell on, but you just got to. I guess you could say it was a focus issue, or a lack of aggressiveness to the ball. Instead of letting it come to me, I should have attacked it more.“
“I mean, when we start playing good teams and games are close like that, you can’t have a breakdown, whether it’s catching the ball or penalties. You have to execute when you get the chance, and we let two big plays slip away. We can’t do that when you play a good team. You can’t do that if we’re going to win.”
After that TCU (6-1, 3-0) — the nation’s top-ranked defense in yards allowed — clamped down, and when Fairchild made the call to bench Farris (just 5-of-11 passing for 67 yards with an interception) in the third quarter after he missed a wide open Dion Morton on the sideline, in favor of backup Klint Kubiak, the Horned Frogs amped up the pressure even more.
“We had to get ourselves into a position where we put it more on the offensive line and the quarterback, and we were fortunate,”
TCU coach Gary Patterson said. “We got a couple sacks, and we were able to get some pressure and do some things.”
The Frogs, whose 22 sacks led the nation entering the game, didn’t get to Farris at all in the first half, but did the opening drive of the third quarter.
After that, he hit the bench and late in the game, Kubiak hit the ground. Often. Five times in all.
After Kubiak came in, he dropped back to pass 27 straight plays, and that only fueled the TCU pass rush even more.
Not that Fairchild felt the Rams had a choice.
“Then it got to be silly,”
Fairchild said. “At one point I’m looking around, and they’ve play a nickel defense, and they’ve got three safeties at the linebacker area. You’re not going to make yards running the football. They’re going to make you throw it.“
“I think we’re very capable of winning; we just didn’t rise to the occasion this game. You get what you deserve in life. I’m not sitting here saying we should have won this game. We got what we deserved. I told our team that, now let’s go back to work.”
CSU opened the game with an impressive nine-play, 78-yard scoring drive capped by Gartrell Johnson III’s 4-yard run. But the closest the Rams came to the end zone after that was the TCU 29 on Kubiak’s second drive, and a holding call on Johnson pushed them back to the 39. Two plays later, Kubiak was sacked for the second time, fumbling the ball to TCU in the process.
TCU also scored on its first drive on an Aaron Brown 6-yard run, but CSU’s Tommie Hill blocked the point-after, keeping Colorado State in the lead, 7-6. Two drives later, a 3-yard run by Joseph Turner gave the Frogs a 13-7 lead it held the remainder of the game.
