After a "fun-filled" Labor Day Weekend my brain is still in a bit of a fog of one-part hangover and one-part mourning over the TCU-Baylor game. I am currently still in the process of piecing together my thoughts on the loss and what it all means for the Frogs, but college football waits for no man and I'm sure many of you are ready to look at the de-facto "MWC Game of the Week," TCU at Air Force. Luckily for me I got an email this morning from a friend of mine who is a former All-MWC linebacker for the Falcons and an "X's and O's" savant who wanted to share his thoughts on the game with me. I have decided to run his email unedited without his consent as a kind of "letter to the editor." I hope you enjoy it and it brings you, the reader, some extra insight on the matchup.
Ben - what's up with the blog? You get a girlfriend and I no longer can count on insightful columns on a daily basis? What's your assessment on our Saturday match-up? The Boise picture was a nice start to my day but no articles since Aug 31? Let's pick it up a bit. To help you, here's my take on Saturday:
I'm struggling with the fact it's only Wednesday...can't wait to be in Falcon Stadium on Saturday morning. I was shocked to see TCU only favored by 2. It should be a 7-10 pt spread. TCU will be better this week defensively. AFA played very average football in week 1 and didn't look impressive (other than rushing for almost 400 yards). SD never threatened but we were sloppy and have 3 or 4 turnovers. Unacceptable.
I'm optimistic though. TCU seems to be struggling in the secondary. The safety position is critical to stop the option. When TCU is dominant against AFA, it's because their safeties and CBs are making plays on the option at 1 or 2 yard gains (not 5-7 yards like most teams). I haven't seen safeties play the option like TCU in 2008-2010 since Roy Williams came to town as a senior at Oklahoma. Read this quote...this should be alarming:
"The most disappointing thing…is we missed 20 tackles," Patterson said. "10 or 11 came at the safety position. You can't play this defense if you don't tackle people. Air Force is just like Baylor. They come at you all day long."
My concern is AFA didn't show me they could slow down TCU's offense. We miss Deruyter big time. He's now the d-coordinator at Texas A&M (note they held SMU/June Jones to 14 points). The new guy is ok but not Tim. For AFA to win, we need your QB to show the fact he's inexperienced and make 2-3 critical mistakes. We need your secondary to be confused and miss tackles. If not, TCU could get after us and i'll be hoping we pull some Troy Calhoun magic like a few years back in Falcon Stadium.
Go Falcons,