Perhaps TCU should have been invited to the inaugural College Football Playoffs.
No. 6 TCU sliced up No. 9 Ole Miss 42-3 on Wednesday at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in the Georgia Dome. The win was a small bit of salve for the purple and white after being skipped over for the playoffs in favor of Ohio State.
That exclusion was motivation that Horned Frogs (12-1) coach Gary Patterson used during the weeks between the announcement and the bowl, not that he wanted to talk about it after Wednesday’s win.
“I don’t think I have to say anything,” Patterson said after the win set a record for margin of victory in the bowl game.
The Peach Bowl figured to be a matchup between the Horned Frogs’ offense, the second-best in scoring (46.8 points per game) in FBS this season, against Ole Miss (9-4) and its top-rated scoring defense (13.8 points per game).
The slick-as-a-greased-frog offense did its part, but it was TCU’s overlooked defense that stole the show. The Horned Frogs sacked Bo Wallace five times and limited the Rebels to 59 yards and four first downs in the first half. The Rebels finished with a season-low 129 yards.
Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said the movement by the Horned Frogs’ front six on defense caused his team a lot of problems. That, coupled with TCU consistently winning one-on-one battles, proved the difference for his offense.
“TCU is a very good team,” Freeze said. “They deserved every mention to be one of the four.”
With its defense rolling, the Horned Frogs’ offense scored more than enough points by the end of the first half to send a few Ole Miss fans out in search of early New Year’s Eve festivities.
After intercepting Wallace on Ole Miss’ opening drive, TCU used a trick play to take a 7-0 lead just one minute into the game. Trevone Boykin threw a long lateral to wide receiver Kolby Listenbee, who hit tailback Aaron Green running open down the middle for a 31-yard touchdown.
The Horned Frogs made the score 14-0 on a 15-yard scoring run by Green with 6:23 left in the first quarter. Ole Miss thought it had TCU stopped after an incomplete pass on third-and-1 on the 36-yard line, but the Horned Frogs picked up the first down with a short pass on fourth down to keep the drive going.
It didn’t take long for the purple-and-white clad TCU fans to begin chanting derogatory things about the SEC, followed by “We want Bama.”
The Horned Frogs grabbed a 21-0 lead on a 12-yard scoring pass from Boykin to Josh Doctson with 11:00 left in the first half as the Horned Frogs continued slicing the Rebels defense.
The lead grew to 28-0 on an interception in the end zone by defensive tackle James McFarland with two minutes left in the first half.
By the end of the day, TCU fans might have actually gotten carpal-tunnel syndrome from the number of times they held up the Horned Frog hand symbol (two hooked fingers and a thumb) after every big play.
Not there was much drama left, but the Horned Frogs took away any hope Ole Miss had of rallying with two big plays to open the second half. Nathan Noble returned the opening kickoff 65 yards to the 34-yard line. Three plays later, Listenbee outwrestled safety Cody Prewitt for a jump ball in the end zone to give the Horned Frogs a 35-0 lead.
Boykin said he thought TCU’s tempo wore down Ole Miss’ defense. The Horned Frogs ran 79 plays in racking up 423 yards. The 42 points was the most given up by the Rebels this season and the most since allowing 66 to Texas in 2012.
“The emotion was there,” Prewitt said. “The passion was there. We just made too many mistakes.”
The players and Patterson mostly and repeatedly sidestepped talk of missing the playoffs after the win. Patterson joked with the reporters that they could keep asking if not being a part of the Big Four was motivation, but that his players were all going to give variations of the same answer.
“It would have been a blessing to be in it, but we are happy to be Chick-fil-A Bowl champions and live with that for the rest of our lives,” Boykin said.
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