Big 12 Football Week 13 in Review: SB Nation Whiparound

We’ve got just one week left to go for Big 12 football, but some teams are done as Kansas, Texas, Texas Tech, and Iowa State all played their final games of 2016 this past weekend. That also happens to be a list of teams that will not be bowling this winter.

So what happened? Let’s get right to it.

Baylor 35 @ Texas Tech 54

The Red Raiders didn’t mess around with Baylor, opening up a 41-21 lead by halftime and cruising the rest of the way.

Obviously Viva The Matadors was quite pleased:

Too bad we aren’t getting a bowl game, because dang we looked good yesterday! It was the win that we needed to finish this season on a positive note, cool Kliff’s seat down, to silence the haters, and show people that Texas Tech isn’t just going to lay down.

Is Coach Bro still in trouble?

With the elephant in the room being Kliff’s job status, my hunch is that a win over Baylor bought him at least another year. I don’t know anything for a fact, but I believe that Kliff will return as the head football coach next year.

Meanwhile, Our Daily Bears didn’t bother to spend much time recapping this one:

The chief culprits in this one were an offense that went 6 straight possessions without scoring and a defense that gave up TDs of 35, 40, 81, 80, and 62 yards. Oh, and we lost the turnover battle 4-0.

There, I spent about as much time on this post as it appeared our staff did in getting ready for this game.

In other Baylor news, SB Nation has some information that is really super important to Baylor fans:

Baylor football’s search for its next head coach has reportedly shifted to one person — Southern Methodist head coach Chad Morris. Football Scoop’s Zach Barnett reported on Tuesday that Baylor is “zeroing in” on the Mustang’s second-year head coach.

TCU 31 @ Texas 9

The Charlie Strong era officially came to an end in Austin. A 7-6 game at halftime saw TCU put away the Longhorns late in the game with a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns.

Per Frogs O War, TCU dominated this game with their rushing game:

TCU gained 475 yards on offense en route to thumping Texas 31-9, with 297 coming on the ground. Anderson led TCU rushers with 103 yards and a touchdown on three carries.

The TCU defense kept Texas’ struggling offense, well, struggling:

Ultimately, Texas failed to find the endzone.

TCU’s defense was absolutely stellar in this game, giving up just nine points, despite Texas finding themselves in the red zone four times. Ty Summers and Travin Howard had 14 and 11 tackles, respectively, while the corners played lights out, and the defensive line totaled four sacks.

It’s likely Charlie Strong’s last game as the head coach of Texas, and he’ll finish with an 0-3 record against the Horned Frogs.

At Burnt Orange Nation, this game was a microcosm of the entire Charlie Strong era, which has been defined by missed opportunities:

Missed opportunities defined the first half and early part of the third quarter — Texas trailed at halftime, 7-6, despite four trips into the red zone. When the game clock hit zero in Austin, Strong dropped to 1-18 when trailing at halftime.

Charlie Strong would be fired the next day.

At the end of the game, there was no more body surfing for Strong to create a scene similar to Les Miles at LSU last season, just resignation and a sad post-game scene.

BON now looks forward to the Tom Herman era at UT.

While the news was widely circulated that Strong would officially lose his job in a meeting on Saturday morning, Herman revealed that he met with Fenves and Perrin on Friday evening after Texas lost to TCU at home.

There wasn’t much time between the announcements of Strong’s firing and Herman’s hiring:

After informing his former Houston Cougars players of his decision and departing the Space City early Saturday afternoon, the Texas Longhorns announced Tom Herman as the next head football coach in Austin a matter of hours after terminating Charlie Strong.

Kansas 19 @ Kansas State 34

It wasn’t the blowout most folks expected or Wildcat fans wanted.

If you believe Bring On The Cats, this one was over in the second quarter:

Donny Starks had seen just about enough of Carter Stanley hitting short passes. He sized up the play, timed his move, and stepped right into the path of yet another. A quick 39 yards later, Starks was in the end zone, and Kansas State had a 20-3 lead.

Despite injuries to Jesse Ertz and Alex Barnes, and several Kansas attempts to make it interesting, the game was all but over.

But that’s the thing. This series hasn’t been interesting the majority of the time when Bill Snyder has been on that sideline. We here at RCT obviously weren’t thrilled with the result, but there were some positives:

Kansas fans came into today’s game hoping their Jayhawks would not be embarrassed, and for the most part, I think that was accomplished.

Do tell.

It wasn’t the pasting that it usually has been in the Bill Snyder era. Kansas had over 400 yards of total offense, but was only 4-14 on third downs. (When was the last time KU had 400 yards of offense vs K-State? I don’t want to look.)

Is there anything folks can take away from this game?

One has to think, though, had David Beaty had called plays all season long the same way he did in the fourth quarter of this game, how much better would the KU offense look? KU was aggressive, going down the field, and making things happen.

West Virginia 49 @ Iowa State 19

The Cyclones hung around for a half, trailing only 21-16 at the break, but just couldn’t keep up with West Virginia in the second half.

Smoking Musket says this game was never really in doubt:

The Mountaineers jumped out to an early 7-3 lead in the first quarter and never looked back. West Virginia quarterback Skyler Howard had a bit of a redeeming performance, after a few less than stellar outings in the past couple weeks.

WRNL only kinda disagrees:

The story of this game was penalties, the inability of the Cyclone offense to finish drives, and turnovers. ISU racked up 85 penalty yards on the day and didn’t score a single TD on offense, despite making it into WVU territory on all but one of their possessions.

They think better times are on the horizon for ISU football:

Today was certainly a letdown after what transpired last week, but this doesn’t make me any less optimistic heading into 2017. A great recruiting class, tons of young and talented players in the program, and getting guys like Jake Campos back on the field will lead to some fun games in the future. Another offseason under Matt Campbell means more learning, growing, and preparing to take Iowa State to the next level.