What is the most beautiful thing in the world? Romantics might say a sunset, teenage boys might lean towards Margot Robbie, but I’m different. I’m a football fan and clearly the most beautiful thing in the world is a Mason Rudolph deep ball. Seeing that ball fly through the air to be dropped on a dime, as we saw so many times through the first 3 weeks, is indescribable. He can hit a laser pass to a guy riding a jet ski, as we saw this summer and man, do I love it. But TCU, apparently, doesn’t like my happiness, as they prevented Rudolph from doing that almost all day. Near the end of the first quarter, we got a glimpse of the beauty, but after that, almost nothing. Why, TCU, did you have to ruin my day?
Going into the game I was feeling a lot of love for the Pokes at home. Some other contributors, Cody Goggin in particular as heard on Campus Cover, didn’t have so much confidence and chose to ride with the Horned Frogs. Cody was right and I was wrong. Last year in Fort Worth, Gary Patterson and Co. made Rudolph look pedestrian and he did relatively the same thing today. Rudolph, yes, threw for a ton of yards, but he threw two picks, both on crazy plays, and only had 2 touchdowns to go along with a slightly above average completion percentage. Kenny Hill looked great and running back Darius Anderson had a career day, going for 160 yards and 3 touchdowns to lead the Horned Frogs. The Pokes will have to rebound if they hope to stand a shot in the Big 12 race.
TCU gets a bye next week before welcoming WVU to town on October 7th. Will Grier has looked great this year for the Mountaineers, but the WVU defense looked shaky today against Kansas, so look for TCU to put up bunches of points and stay undefeated. They have until November 11th until they have to travel to Norman to take on the Big 12 favorite Sooners and secure a spot in the Big 12 title game. For the Pokes, they have a high scoring, 3-0 Texas Tech team next week followed by soon-to-be 0-4 Baylor, then Texas before having to face WVU and Oklahoma in back to back weeks. Expect this game to light a fire under Oklahoma State and for them to go on a roll entering the Oklahoma game. They will either need to beat Oklahoma or hope TCU drops 2 games to buy themselves a spot in the Big 12 title game. The TCU option seems shaky, so Gundy and his mullet will need to have some tricks up their sleeves to stop Baker Mayfield on November 4th. We will see how the season shakes out, but the country has a new favorite to face Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game.