WACO, Texas — There is no way to simulate the chaotic hell that TCU was in on Saturday afternoon in Waco at McLane Stadium.
This was not a Thursday afternoon practice fire drill kick.
This kick was a late November game-on-the-line everything.
An undefeated season. The playoffs. A shot at a national championship.
TCU coach Sonny Dykes trusted a college kicker to keep this all going. That takes practice. Guts. Courage. Faith. Heart. Some stupidity. Maybe a fifth of tequila.
“Griff’s gonna go win the game,” TCU quarterback Max Duggan thought as kicker Griffin Kell and the special teams ran onto the field to attempt a season-saving 40-yard field goal against Baylor with 12 seconds remaining, no timeouts and a draining clock.
“Come on baby,” TCU defensive back Bud Clark said to himself, “get it off.”
Kell got the the 40-yard kick off with three seconds remaining; by the time the ball sailed through the uprights toward the Brazos River, the clock expired.
No. 4 TCU defeated Baylor, 29-28.
Baylor blew a 28-20 fourth-quarter lead by allowing TCU to score nine points in the final 2:07.
This will be as close as TCU can ever come to avenging its infamous 61-58 loss to Baylor, on the same field, back in 2014. That loss prevented TCU from going to the College Football Playoff.
TCU still must win two more games to make college football’s bracket, but its game against Baylor will not be the reason it won’t.
The win will not satisfy a single national detractor, nor a person on the college football selection committee, but it should.
TCU is 11-0 and 8-0 in the Big 12. In a power five league, those records are rare and mandate national respect.
I asked Dykes after the game what he thinks about the national narrative that TCU doesn’t deserve to be No. 4.
“I don’t care what they say; they can say whatever they want,” Dykes said. “Our job is to win football games and we’ve done that. What anybody says I could care less.
“This league is really good. It’s hard to win 11 games in a row. (Pundits), that’s their job, they get paid to say stuff. I think half the time they don’t believe what they say.”
He’s wrong. It’s less than half.
His problem is not a national pundit or two who judges a team based on the name on the front of the jersey.
His problem remains the college football playoff selection committee member who does the exact same thing.
Any team that is undefeated this late in the season is bleeping good.
TCU has its flaws, but it will celebrate Thanksgiving without having suffered a single loss.
This may not be the best team in TCU football history, but this is certainly the most engrossing and entertaining year in TCU football history.
TCU is undefeated for a lot of reasons, starting with a group, and a quarterback, that does not quit. They all just keep playing.
They have fallen behind repeatedly this season in the second half of Big 12 games, only to come back to win all of them.
On Saturday, they gave up over 500 yards, including 232 on the ground to Baylor.
This is one week after they gave up 199 yards, including 28 on the ground, at Texas.
In the second half at Baylor, TCU lost leading rusher Kendre Miller and leading wide receiver Quentin Johnston to injuries. Receiver Derius Davis was not available because of a hand injury.
Kell missed a point-after attempt following a third-quarter touchdown that gave TCU its first lead of the game.
Baylor scored 14 straight points, and had TCU’s playoff chances headed to the bottom of the Brazos.
When TCU scored its final touchdown, with 2:07 remaining, and running back Emari Demercado could not catch what would have been a walk-in two-point conversion to tie the game, they still were not done.
They would have been with 1:34 remaining in the game but Baylor punter Isaac Power failed to see that TCU had 12 men on the field just moments before his punt.
Had Baylor punted as the 12th TCU player sprinted towards the sidelines, it would have been an automatic first down for the Bears, who could have ended the game in victory formation.
“We were fortunate they didn’t snap the ball,” Dykes said. “To win a game like this, you’ve got to catch a break here and there.”
TCU didn’t catch every break, but it caught enough of them at the right time.
On TCU’s game-winning drive, it had no timeouts; facing a second-and-1 at the Baylor 41, Duggan’s ability to leap to the sidelines and stop the clock, on a play that gained nothing, saved precious seconds.
About 30 seconds later, with the clock ticking towards 00:00, TCU coaches called for “Bazooka,” which is the fire-drill field-goal attempt they practice every Thursday.
This wasn’t Thursday.
This was everything.
Kell nailed it, and TCU can still make the playoffs.
