MMQB: No Upset In Ames

TCU made it to the bye week 7-0, which, if you were being told this in August, is no big deal. However, it's October 19, and TCU is down 1,000 starters on defense, with the health of the offense seemingly hanging by just a few threads. A miracle win over Texas Tech, followed by a Heisman-level comeback against Kansas State, and a very suspect start Saturday in Ames, have all taken multiple years off my life, and had my 29-year-old self buying new life insurance.

In this episode of the MMQB we're taking a look at the Iowa State game, as well as previewing some stuff that's coming later this week.

The Good

Trevone Boykin's numbers are getting ridiculous. He now has 2,539 passing yards and 25 passing touchdowns on the season, bolstered by his 436 yard, four touchdown performance against Iowa State. Not to mention, he had 74 yards and a touchdown on the ground, too, moving those numbers to 440/5 on the season. He's the reason that, for the third time in four weeks, I have not been terribly worried about losing despite TCU's defense looking like a well-designed sieve.

Boykin completed 84.4% of his passes on Saturday night. Only five passes that left his hand fell incomplete. Ten fell into the beautiful hands of Josh Doctson, who finished the night with 190 yards and two touchdowns, despite missing a good chunk of the first half after having the wind knocked out of him.

The fact that these two performances seemed, at the time, rather pedestrian, is because Boykin and Doctson have been doing this stuff all year. Let's try not to become numb to it, despite the excuse given to us by Spencer Hall:

A public service announcement: We're all getting a little cavalier about the kind of numbers Trevone Boykin amasses each week. Look, I can type 436 yards on 27-for-32 passing for 4 TDs and 13 rushes for 74 yards and one TD on the ground all I like, but if you're numb to his excellence at this point, you couldn't be blamed. He does this every week, and when you do something incredible every week, you risk spoiling everyone with your otherworldliness. That's why Dr. Manhattan left Earth. One day they're calling you a god, and a couple of weeks later when they're used to you, they're bored when you cure cancer for the 50th time.

So instead of just shrugging off any more of Boykin's fantastic performances, just do your best impression of him.

TCU's post-first quarter defense was pretty good too. After allowing over 260 yards of offense in the first quarter, the Frogs turned up the heat, allowing just 199 yards to Iowa State for the remainder of the game.

The Bad

Stop me if you've heard this before. Pass interference and other penalties in the secondary are officially out of control. Corry O'Meally was called for two more on Saturday, bringing his total for the season to seven. TCU's secondary as a whole has been called for 12 pass interference penalties this season, and those are just the accepted ones. There have been three or four that were declined because the pass was still completed.

They've got 11 days to get their heads right before they face off against a West Virginia team that will absolutely have a chip on their shoulder from a season ago.

Meanwhile, it would be nice to see the linebackers get their heads wrapped around where they're supposed to be on the field (yes, they're learning on the fly, and I do give them some slack for that). An out-of-position linebacker is a death sentence in the 4-2-5, especially against the run, and that will come into play much more in the second half of the season. Again, the bye week should help sort some of that out.

The Bye Week

If you look at the schedule, the bye week really comes at the perfect time. TCU now has an extra 4 days or so to get healthy and prepare for a West Virginia team that remembers what happened in Morgantown a season ago. Beyond that, the Thursday night game gives TCU an extra day or two to prepare for a trip to Stillwater, where the Frogs haven't won since 1991. Unfortunately, bye weeks don't heal torn ACL's, or the Frogs would be fully loaded going into the final stretch.

Updated Staff Standings

Felts, Mason, and I had the best records this week, going 7-2. Felts was the only one to correctly call MIchigan State over Michigan, while Mason went full VIVA LA FUENTE with his Memphis over Ole Miss pick. The 7-2 weeks for Felts and Boogie moved them into a three-way tie for first in the standings with Rusty. Samantha fell right back into a three-way cellar-dweller tie with her 3-6 week, while Warrior went 4-5, and Scott went 6-3 to lock up the bottom quarter of the standings.

Here are the full standings. I, for one, think it's rather impressive how many we've all gotten right.

And here are the games we'll be picking this week.