Monday Morning Quarterback: Sooner Stompin'

The Good

Trevone Boykin. A career-high in total yards in the biggest game of his career is very telling. The guy is willing to step up and lay it all on the line. For the season, Boykin is throwing for 294 yards and 2.5 touchdowns per game, to go with 65 yards on the ground (and just under one rushing touchdown per contest). Against Oklahoma, the embattled QB and his wide receivers, and running backs, worked to pick apart an Oklahoma secondary that was susceptible to the big play (Ian Boyd nailed that, seriously). Kolby Listenbee is proving that he's more than just a one-trick pony, and despite a pretty bad drop, he finished with five catches for 103 yards.

While everyone has been talking about Boykin, we should point out that B.J. Catalon had 144 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns on the day. He's got struggles near the goalline, and he had a terrible fumble, but overall, the guy had a really strong game.

There were three big plays made by the defense that stand out as obvious game-changers. First, Paul Dawson's fake-blitz, drop-back interception return for a touchdown helped TCU's defense score one fewer point than they allowed to Oklahoma in the second half. It was arguably the biggest play of the game, but just arguably. That's because of the play made by Dawson's counterpart, Marcus Mallet. Mallet managed to shoot the gap on a major 4th-and-1 as Oklahoma was trying to take the lead, and stop the Sooners' huge back Samaje Perine, turning the ball back over to the Frogs with 3:08 left in the game.

Wedged between those two plays was Chris Hackett's tip-to-himself interception deep in TCU territory, the second of the two TCU interceptions on the day, which gave the Horned Frogs the ball back with 6:07 left in the game and a chance to extend their lead.

The Bad

TCU's secondary took a while to adjust to Sterling Shepard in the slot, allowing him to get off to a huge start, and almost single-handedly get Oklahoma back in the game after the Frogs jumped out to a 14-0 start. For the day Shepard had seven catches for 215 yards and a touchdown. The defense didn't have a great first half in general, allowing 295 yards of offense to the Sooners before halftime, compared to 166 yards after the break.

On the other side of the ball, the offense needs to do a better job of protecting the ball. Sure, we say it a lot, but I'm of the opinion that as long as it keeps happening, I'm going to keep talking about it. Three turnovers, including two from Boykin, and two in the last seven minutes of the game, have to be eliminated if the Frogs want to keep winning games. That doesn't include Boykin's fumble into the endzone in the first quarter, which was thankfully recovered by Cliff Murphy for a TCU touchdown.

Oh, one more thing, what the heck has happened to our special teams? Oberkrom was terrible on Saturday, missing a gimme field goal. He needs to pull it together ASAP. The special teams also allowed an extra point to not only be blocked, but returned for two points. In the fourth quarter. Instead of the game being 38-31 TCU, as it should have been, the Frogs found themselves up just four with 14 minutes to play.

Not to sound nit-picky, but it seemed like a few receivers dropped passes that were easily catchable. Listenbee literally had a pass hit him in the face, and I'm pretty sure there were two others that should have been caught.

The Player of the Week

Boykin's work against the Sooners has earned him a Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week award, and it is well deserved and hard-earned. Now, if he wants to go ahead and earn another one on October 11th, that'd be fine by me.