Frogs Leap Past Texas Football, Remain In Playoff Picture

By Steve Habel/Associate Editor

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AUSTIN – If there is one overwhelming difference between Texas and TCU it’s that the Horned Frogs know exactly the kind of team they are and the Longhorns are still trying to figure out how good they can be.

That fundamental dissimilarity – and six Texas turnovers, five of [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]which set the table for TCU points – spelled doom for the Longhorns in a 48-10 Thanksgiving night loss to the sixth-ranked Horned Frogs before an announced Thanksgiving night crowd of 96,496 at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

Texas’ chances of pulling an upset were intercepted and fumbled away to a TCU team hungry to make a big enough of a statement to move into the discussion for a spot in the four-team College Football Playoff.

You certainly won’t hear Texas coach Charlie Strong argue about the Horned Frogs’ ability to win and win big.

“TCU has a good football team,” Strong said afterward, with his body language clearly indicating defeat and disappointment at how his team played on Senior Night. “Whenever you play a team like that, you have to play clean and we didn’t do that tonight.

“I just didn’t see that coming,” Strong added. “We played well (in November) up to this point and, knowing what was at stake, I felt we would have played a lot better (against TCU).”

Tyrone Swoopes had his worst game as Texas’ starting quarterback, throwing four interceptions (including a pick-six) and fumbling after a sack on a play that led to a return touchdown.

“I could never get into any kind of rhythm and I knew I wasn’t playing well,” Swoopes said. “Turning the ball over is never good and it just kind of got to me a little bit. I couldn’t really get back up and get going again.”

With the loss, the Horns finished the regular season at 6-6 and 5-4 in Big 12 Conference play. All the confidence Texas gained from a three-game winning streak in November to become bowl eligible was quickly erased by the poor game it played against the powerful Horned Frogs (10-1, 7-1 in Big 12).

“We came in here to win a ballgame – we didn’t come here for anything else,” TCU coach Gary Patterson said. “We got some takeaways and did some things we needed to do to win. If you had asked (before the game) if it was going to be 48-10 in Austin, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

The game marked the first time the Longhorns had six turnovers in game since a 48-24 loss at Baylor in 2011. And it’s the first time Texas has lost at home to Baylor and TCU in the same season since 1933.

TCU converted a 53-yard punt return by Cameron Echols-Luper into a 42-yard field goal by Jaden Oberkrom on its first possession. Although the field goal was the lesser of two evils, the mistake that spawned it set the tone for the remainer of the game.

Later in the first quarter a Swoopes interception by Sam Carter allowed the Horned Frogs to set up shop at the UT 24, but Texas’ defense stiffened again and forced another Oberkrom kick, this one from 29 yards out, and held TCU to a 6-0 advantage.

Another Swoopes mistake handed the Horned Frogs their first touchdown. Carrying the ball loosely in traffic as he was being sacked by TCU’s Josh Carraway, he fumbled. The football took one bounce on the turf before it was scooped up by Terrell Lathan and returned 40 yards for a TD and a 13-0 Horned Frogs lead.

Texas finally got on the board in the second quarter when it had its best drive of the half, moving 36 yards in nine plays to a 47-yard Nick Rose field goal. But even that successful possession had its hiccup as the Horns were set up to go for a first down on 4th and 1 at the 25 but were whistled for a false start penalty that made Strong reconsider his strategy.

The Horns’ defense allowed just one significant drive in the first half (nine plays, 67 yards) and it culminated in a 4-yard scoring pass from Trevone Boykin to David Porter with 1:34 to play before halftime.

The drive’s two biggest plays came on third downs – the first a 38-yard hookup from Boykin to Josh Doctson (who jumped over Texas cornerback Quandre Diggs to make the catch) and the second the TD pass, in which Porter worked a double move in the back of the end zone against UT’s former walk-on safety Dylan Haines.

Texas’ defense managed to keep TCU out of the end zone in the third quarter despite two more Swoopes’ interceptions, the second of which came in the waning seconds of the quarter at the UT 18-yard line. The Horns managed just 38 total yards of offense in the quarter.

Early in the fourth quarter TCU made any comeback for the Horns a lost proposition when Boykin hit Doctson with the pair’s second scoring connection, this time from 22 yards out. The pass was again on a jump ball over Diggs.

A bit of the Horns’ future was on display on Texas’ ensuing drive, when freshman Armanti Foreman took a short pass from Swoopes 73-yards for a TD while showing off his blazing speed.

After a TCU punt bounced off Diggs’ right foot midway through the fourth quarter, the Horned Frogs needed just three plays to drive 19 yards for an in-your-face TD, a 10-yard run by Boykin on which he hurdled a Texas defender on the way into the end zone.

TCU pushed the lead to 41-10 on a 5-yard Aaron Green TD run at the 2:53 mark of the fourth quarter and added insult to injury when Carraway picked off a Swoopes pass and returned it 33 yards for a final score.

The Longhorns will have to wait to see where and who they will play in their bowl game. Despite the call from fans about a matchup with Texas A&M in the AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl in Houston, a more likely scenario would send Texas to Memphis to play Arkansas in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl on Dec. 29. The Horns have a month to stew about their performance on Turkey Day and to figure out how to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

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