Monday Measure: With blunders and bad decisions, Saturday was a low point for college football coaches

Saturday was not a banner day for decision-making from college football coaches.

There were the laughably conservative fourth-down decisions from Jimbo Fisher in Texas A&M's loss to Alabama, USC’s Lincoln Riley getting far too cute with his play-calling as the Trojans tried to set up a game-winning field goal and Arizona’s Jedd Fisch not even knowing the overtime rules as his Wildcats tried to pull off the upset over USC.

But none of those moves compare to the inexcusable gaffe from Miami’s Mario Cristobal that cost his team the game vs. Georgia Tech.

Miami had a 20-17 lead in the final minutes and the ball deep in Georgia Tech territory. The Yellow Jackets were out of timeouts and unable to stop the clock, but Miami continued to call running plays instead of simply taking a knee to drain the remainder of the clock and seal the win.

Fittingly, disaster struck. On a third-and-10 play with the clock ticking under 40 seconds, Miami called a handoff to Don Chaney Jr. Running a play instead of taking a knee was already silly enough, but it got worse when Chaney tried to fight for extra yards and was stripped of the ball by the Yellow Jackets.

A kneel down would have ended the game. Instead, Georgia Tech recovered the fumble and needed only four plays to pull off a miracle as Haynes King found Christian Leary behind the defense for the game-winning 44-yard touchdown with a single second remaining on the clock.

Final score: Georgia Tech 23, Miami 20.

And Cristobal’s nonsensical explanation after the game somehow made it worse.

"When the drive started, it was going to be at 1:57 and we could burn about 1:27 off and then it was recalibrated. I should have taken a timeout right there at the end,” Cristobal said. “I thought he could get the first down. We talked about two hands on the ball, but that’s not good enough. Just should have told him to take a knee and that’s it. Fumbled the ball at the 25 and they went 75 yards in two plays, so no excuse.”

Asked for further clarification, Cristobal admitted point blank what we all know.

“We should have taken a knee.”

Perhaps Miami thought Georgia Tech still had a timeout? Surely that’s why UM was trying to get the first down there, right? Nope.

“There was no confusion there,” Cristobal said. “We were moving the pile, we had a pretty good drive going. I am not going to make an excuse for it and say we should have done this or that. That’s it. Sometimes we get carried away where they finish the game and run it. But I should have just stepped in and said, ‘Hey, just take a knee.’ ”

That’s about as embarrassing as it gets. And if it weren’t for Cristobal’s inexcusable approach to running out the clock, Fisher’s conservative fourth-down choices in Texas A&M’s loss to Alabama would have been subject to much more scrutiny on a national level.

For Fisher, the head-scratching decisions started in the final minute of the first half. The Aggies had a 17-10 lead and got the ball back at their own 20 with two timeouts and 43 seconds remaining in the half. Alabama was getting the ball to start the second half, but Fisher apparently had no interest in trying to add to the lead before the break. The Aggies just handed the ball off and let the first-half clock expire, taking those two timeouts with them to the locker room.

Things got worse in the second half. After Alabama tied the score at 17-17, Texas A&M faced a fourth-and-1 at the Alabama 45. Fisher sent his punter out there rather than trusting his offense to get a yard. The punt resulted in a touchback and Alabama promptly marched right down the field again to take a 24-17 lead.

And then on A&M’s next offensive possession, Fisher brought out the punter again at the Tide’s 45. This was on a fourth-and-6 play with 11:51 to play.

It didn’t end there. Later in the fourth, Fisher called for a field goal try on fourth-and-5 from the Alabama 25. The kick was blocked. And then in the final minutes when the Aggies got down to the Alabama 2-yard line while down 26-17, Fisher couldn’t decide whether to go for the touchdown or kick a field goal. He wasted a timeout, and then kicked the 20-yard field goal anyway.

You cannot spend that timeout if you’re going to kick the ball. Fisher did anyway, and then he was unable to stop the clock after an unsuccessful onside kick. If A&M still had that third timeout, it could have changed Alabama’s approach and gotten the A&M offense one more opportunity.

Fisher's explanations for those decisions were baffling. For the fourth-and-1 at the 45, he said he would have probably kept the offense on the field had the Aggies needed less than a yard for the first down. For real.

"It was tied up. The score was 17-17. They just had momentum in the game. We missed a third-and-2 and we went to a fourth-and-1. If it wasn't a full yard, if it had been inside a yard, I probably would have went for it," Fisher said. "I said, 'We can pin them back.' Our punter does a great job. Unfortunately that was the one he kicked just a little bit long and they got it at the 20. But it was a tie game and I felt our defense had played great. I thought we would get the ball back."

That’s the kind of coaching you can get for a $95 million contract.

- Sam Cooper

TCU on pace for historic futility for a national runner-up

TCU is heading for some rare territory. And it’s not where the Horned Frogs want to be.

TCU, the defending national runner-up, sits 3-3 at the halfway mark of the season after a 27-14 loss at Iowa State on Saturday night. TCU was outscored 17-7 in the second half and starting QB Chandler Morris left the game in the second half with a leg injury.

Iowa State finished the game with four interceptions; Morris was picked off twice, Josh Hoover was intercepted after taking over for Morris and wide receiver JP Richardson was also picked off on a trick play pass attempt.

With games against Kansas State, Texas and Oklahoma remaining, a bowl game is still far from a certainty for the Horned Frogs. And if Morris is out for an extended period of time, TCU could find itself challenging a mark for futility that Texas set in 2010.

After going to the BCS title game after the 2009 season, Texas went 5-7 in 2010. That’s the worst season for a national title game loser since the BCS was implemented in 1998. And 2002 Nebraska — a team that went 7-7 — is the only other team since 1999 to not have a winning season after losing the national title game.

It was too much to expect TCU to contend for the College Football Playoff again after losing so many stellar players from its 2022 squad. The Horned Frogs needed to replace QB Max Duggan, RB Kendre Miller, WR Quentin Johnston and defenders like Dee Winters and Dylan Horton. But there still seemed to be enough talent on Sonny Dykes' team for the Horned Frogs to at least be in contention in the Big 12.

Instead, we found out in Week 1 that TCU had a lot of work to do when Colorado won in Fort Worth as a three-touchdown underdog. While wins over Houston and SMU were nice, TCU lost at home to West Virginia in Week 5 before the ugly loss in Ames.

The easy answer for the step back is the passing game’s decline. Morris has already thrown five interceptions — Duggan threw eight in 15 games a season ago — and is averaging a yard fewer per pass attempt than Duggan did in 2022.

The rush defense has also gotten gashed recently. West Virginia ran for 201 yards while the Cyclones averaged nearly six yards a carry on the way to 215 yards on the ground on Saturday.

Those are two big areas to improve — and that improvement needs to happen soon. The Horned Frogs are favored by 4.5 points at home against BYU on Saturday and may only be favored one more time the rest of the season.

- Nick Bromberg

Could Louisville be the 2023 version of TCU?

Speaking of TCU, Louisville looks like a team that could follow the Horned Frogs' path from last year.

In its first season under Sonny Dykes, a transfer-filled TCU team embarked on an improbable undefeated run through the regular season. Though the Horned Frogs lost in the Big 12 title game, they upset Michigan in the CFP semifinals before losing to Georgia in the title game.

Louisville has a lot of the same qualities. The Cardinals are in Year 1 under head coach Jeff Brohm and are off to a surprising 6-0 start. UL moved up to No. 14 in the AP Top 25 following an emphatic 33-20 home win over Notre Dame on Saturday.

Brohm revamped the roster through the transfer portal in the offseason, and he's taking advantage of a favorable schedule that doesn't include ACC favorites like Florida State, North Carolina or Clemson. Next is a road trip to face a struggling Pitt team before the bye week.

From there, Louisville could face No. 17 Duke without starting QB Riley Leonard (who is nursing a high-ankle sprain). The Duke game is at home, as are games vs. 2-4 Virginia Tech and 1-5 Virginia. The final two weeks will be more challenging with a trip to Miami and the rivalry game vs. Kentucky.

It's unlikely that Louisville gets through that stretch unscathed, but it'd frankly be a surprise if UL isn't at least a tangential part of the CFP conversation into the month of November.

- Sam Cooper