By Zach Walker
The new season of SMU Football, deserves a new, fresher way of recapping the games. Rather than the drooling, boring full recap of a play-by-play, I’m going to highlight three moments in the game that were most crucial to the outcome.
A summary of the TCU game: There really is no looking at it any differently if you’re a player, or a coach for SMU, a loss is a loss. For everyone else, SMU was fantastic. Seriously, SMU was not supposed to compete with the third ranked team TCU, they were supposed to be a whipping boy, a tune-up game before TCU dives into conference play. Not so fast. SMU wasn’t going to let TCU just walk off into the horizon with that ‘Iron Skillet’. Matt Davis to Courtland Sutton is going to be on the tip of tongues nationwide for a while, the trust and faith between the two of them is simply stunning and supremely satisfying. Let’s not throw the defense under the bus, to get the important holds and stops at moments in the game is what a team asks of their defense, the stats and yards gained are shown on the screen, the defense just bothers with the next time Trevone Boykin and Aaron Green were on the field. To force the Horned Frogs to have to score on their final possession of the game, that’s what an upset works for. Chad Morris and his troops didn’t win the game, but they won the respect of the nation, and I’ll assume, won quite a lot of freshly sold tickets for upcoming games.
#1: First and ten from the SMU twenty yard line with 2:12 left in the first half: Following a fourth down incompletion by Matt Davis towards Courtland Sutton, the TCU horned Frogs started to roll just before the half closed, and with just over two minutes left in the half, the Frogs would jump on the Mustangs to a discouraging lead. In shotgun, with four wide receivers Trevone Boykin took the snap and dropped back, pumped faked, and the time Nick Horton had grasp on Boykin, he had gone into full-on jelly mode and escaped Horton, re-checked downfield before taking off, then escaped for a twenty-yard touchdown to put the Horned Frogs up by 18.
#2: Third and twelve from the TCU twenty-five yard line with 7:42 in the third quarter: Down a considerable amount, in a game they shouldn’t be in, from Shotgun, Matt Davis took the snap and floated a pass towards Jeremiah Gaines, and Gaines made an incredible adjustment to the ball and caught the ball and turned and lunged towards the endzone, but not before being ruled down at the one yard line. The Mustangs scored two plays later, and started to close the 25 point gap.
#3: Fourth and one from the SMU twenty-three yard line with 11:21 in the fourth quarter: With the Mustangs charging strong towards an upset, the Horned Frogs went for it on fourth down, a read-option hand-off to Aaron Green, who’s gashed the Mustangs’ defense all game long, but Robert Seals, the SMU outside linebacker, beat the blocking tight end and stuffed Green for a stop for loss and a turnover on downs for SMU. Unfortunately, the Mustangs were held to a field goal, and that would be the closest the Mustangs would get to the upset, within five points with eight minutes and twenty seconds left in the game, but the ride that the Mustangs took the Horned Frog on was the important thing.
