Yet Another Comeback Falls Short; Baylor Falls to TCU 33-23

When Baylor trailed 30-0 in the second quarter and had something like 18 yards on our first 7 drives, I decided to spend about the same amount of time on this post-game thread that our coaches did in deciding who would play QB for us throughout this game: basically none. This article would have ended right here.

Regardless the furious fourth-quarter comeback (the second in two weeks), there is almost nothing good to take away from this game at the macro level. Three decent drives late don’t erase the dozen or so that preceded them where the offense performed like its stats say it is as one of the worst in the country, TCU built up what amounted to an insurmountable lead, and the entire team looked lifeless. I continue to believe that keeping Charlie at QB in this game—again, regardless what happened late—was completely indefensible once Baylor went down 14-0 after three drives, and I have no idea why our coaches seemed unwilling to even consider a change or what they were thinking they would accomplish by keeping him in there. Throughout the game he missed makable throws, at least two or three of which, if they hit the receiver in stride, would have been TDs; took sack after sack from holding on to the ball far too long, or just missed wide-open receivers.

You can say I’m overreacting; I have that tendency. You can say there are considerable extenuating circumstances; you’d be right. But the reality is that after our “best week of practice this season” (or whatever the quote was), we came out listless and seemingly unprepared, got down big to another average (at best) team, and then finally turned it on to look halfway decent once the game was already out of reach. Once might be a fluke, the result of all those extenuating circumstances and unbelievable challenges. Twice is the beginning of a pattern. It shouldn’t take getting down big before we start playing to our potential and seemingly “flipping the switch” in terms of energy. The refusal to adapt while beating your head against a wall you know is there is not laudable. And the bottom line is that we are what our record says we are—1-3 going into an away game against ranked Iowa State. It’s not getting easier from here, and we continue to have more questions than answers after every game.

I’m going to take a few minutes to take the kids trick-or-treating and step away from this game, but I’ll admit that my confidence in the staff is shaken somewhat based on what we’ve seen the last three weeks, particularly the complete unwillingness to even consider pulling Brewer. And as happy as I am to see guys like Sqwirl Williams, Yusuf Terry, and Dillon Doyle have their best games of the season to date, I’m afraid that all we really accomplished today is ensuring that we’ll go into another week with a QB that needs to sit in what should be a Year Zero where the most important goal should be setting ourselves up for the future, not rewarding the past.