Reasons Why TCU Lost to Boise State

It seemed that Boise State had Kyle Wilson matched one on one with Kerley all night. That is why he appeared to be playing safety all the while just lining up over Kerley who was in the slot. This could explain his decreased production in the passing game.

As for the running game, I was surprised to not see Kerley line up in the backfield for the wildcat at least once. That’s what I was afraid of.

tcu was not ready for the big time. i just can’t wait till next year when tcu plays a very much improved utah offensive team and utah kicks their azz. boise state showed the bluprint the utes need to use it. tcu loses both hughes and washington. they were the two guys making most of the plays on defense. the defense only allowed 10 points. dalton threw a pick six. tcu also loses one of their top cb. utah should win the mwc next year and might go undefeated. i expect every mwc team to be better except byu. they lose hall, pitta and possibly unga. i’m especially excited for air force and wyoming. if the coach of wyoming could find a couple of decent wr’s from the juco ranks they could win nine games next year with their spread offense. i like there freshman qb and rb. they could be like the texas tech of the mwc with a decent coach. i still want tcu to win 11 games just not make the big show. the mwc could possible get 4 teams with ten wins next season. i can’t wait.

It’s a combination of several things I’ve pointed out several times. Each one feeds into the other, which explains my rage building with each step.

1.) Offensive playcalling. Abandonment of the running game. We got stuffed on our first possession, but after that we ran the ball quite effectively. If we had run dives and power up the middle we could’ve worn down the excellent Bronco back 7 throughout the game.
Because we abandoned the running game, the key is for Dalton to find routes that work and pick on where the Boise Secondary has problems.
2.) Andy Dalton loves him some deep ball. Three picks, two tipped balls that should’ve been intercepted and a grand total of one successful play from the deep sideline routes would seem to indicate Dalton thinks his arm strength is a whole lot better than it actually is. If he had worked the slants and crossing routes in the middle of the field, he would’ve had more success. Or if…
3.) Offensive playcalling. Again. So for some reason we decided there wasn’t enough room on the team flight for our running backs. That’s bad, but it doesn’t mean death, because the Boise secondary played with a fairly deep cushion (to help on the deep sideline routes! A theme emerges.) and as a result, the quick hitches and outs in the flats led to first downs on all but one time they were called. Often our receiver would make the Boise corner miss the tackle, resulting in bonus yards and a 10ish yard pickup. This would be a good job of attacking the weakness that the Boise secondary showed against us: they weren’t tackling particularly well. They weren’t getting beaten deep, but I saw more than a couple of pairs of shoes that Boise CBs had been juked out of.
4.) Boise’s secondary is good at not giving up the deep pass. Considering how many times we tried it last night, it would seem foolish to put it all on Dalton without giving credit to the Broncos. They were well coached and obviously well practiced in tipping balls and coming down with it.

They played us with a cushion to take away the deep pass, and through a combination of offensive playcalling and Dalton’s ginger brain, we decided that we would not win the game without completing a lot of those deep passes.

Arrgh.

Was that the Broncos shut down the run game of TCU allowing only 36 yards, all the while playing 5 and 6 defensive backs almost the entire game.

 BSU was the better team.

     Rah, rah, TCU BSU “GONNA BEAT THE HELL OUTTA YOU AND YOU AND YOU!”