Week 3 of the college football season is officially in the books as it was another monumental weekend for the Big 12. The action started on Thursday night with Arizona State and ended late Saturday night with BYU.
Here is the good, bad, and ugly from Week 3 in the Big 12.
The Good
Taking Care of Business
As always there were several teams who were all business this weekend. It started with Arizona State on Thursday night in San Marcos where they took down Texas State. The Sun Devils defense came up big when it mattered most and had three takeaways in that game. With the win, Arizona State is now 3-0 for the first time since 2019.
Less than 24 hours after the Arizona State game, Kansas State had a big game on their hands against Arizona. Their defense completely dominated as they held Arizona to just seven points and 324 yards. Meanwhile, Avery Johnson took over in the second half as he rushed for over 100 yards.
Some other teams that took care of business in the Big 12 were BYU, Baylor, and Texas Tech. BYU’s Jake Retzlaff threw for almost 300 yards and three touchdowns in the Cougars 34-14 win over Wyoming on the road.
Texas Tech put up 66 points on North Texas and 52 of those came in the first half alone. Behren Morton had a great bounce back game throwing four touchdowns on the day. And how about Baylor? After putting up just six points in the first half against Air Force, the Bears found their rhythm in the second half by outscoring the Falcons 25-0. Also, I believe than Sawyer Robertson should be the starting quarterback moving forward.
Rivalry Wins
Due to conference realignment, we are going to see these out of conference rivalries be played early in the season. On Saturday there were several Big 12 teams taking on in-state rivals. Colorado took down Colorado State with ease thanks to Shedeur Sanders four touchdown passes and Utah managed to beat Utah State on the road without Cam Rising due to their ground game as the Utes ran for over 200 yards.
Cincinnati got the Victory Bell back after losing it last year in overtime. Running back Corey Kiner led the way 126 yards and score. Meanwhile, Oklahoma State’s Alan Bowman tossed five touchdown passes in the Cowboys dominating 45-10 win over Tulsa.
UCF’s Comeback
At one point, TCU had a 28-7 lead in the third quarter, and I thought UCF had no chance to win this game. Well, I was wrong because the Knights went on a roll after that moment. KJ Jefferson had an incredible second half and ended up leading two long scoring drives in the fourth quarter that helped them win the game. Of course, the ground game was working as well with nearly 300 yards led by none other than RJ Harvey who finished with 180 yards and three total touchdowns. When UCF’s backs were against the wall, KJ found a way to get the job done. It was a great way to start to conference play for the Knights.
Congratulations Willie Fritz
I wanted to give a special shout to Houston head coach Willie Fritz. He won his first game at Houston this weekend when his team took down Rice 33-7. Not only did he record his first win at Houston, but he also brought home the Bayou Bucket as well. Congrats, coach!
The Bad
Blown Leads
We have already seen one Pittsburgh comeback against a Big 12 team this season (Cincinnati) and now we can make it two. The Mountaineers were up by ten with less than five minutes left to play. Then they let Pitt score in five plays to pull within three and then went three-and-out on offense. And once again, that defense let the Panthers score quickly as Pitt took a 38-34 lead with just 32 seconds left. What a sloppy finish for West Virginia and Neal Brown’s seat just got even hotter after this one. This was a bad loss not only for West Virginia, but the Big 12 as well.
West Virginia wasn’t the only Big 12 team to blow a lead on Saturday. TCU was up by three scores in the second half after starting the game off with three straight touchdown drives led by Josh Hoover. But in the second half, those touchdowns started turning into field goals and the Horned Frogs defense wore down due to UCF’s physical ground attack. It certainly wasn’t an ideal way to start conference play.
The Ugly
Jalon Daniels
Once again, Kansas finds itself on the wrong side of this column. After losing to Illinois last week on the road, they fell short against UNLV at home on Friday night. The issue? It’s quarterback Jalon Daniels. Coming into the season Daniels had preseason Heisman hype surrounding him and now through three games he has thrown twice as many interceptions as touchdowns. His completion percentage is sitting at less than 55% and he looks like a complete shell of himself. Maybe he needs to be benched because right now Kansas looks like a team that has a better chance of missing a bowl game than making it to Arlington.
Arizona
I said this after the game on Friday night but there is a reason why I listed Arizona as my most overrated team coming into the season. While Noah Fifita and Tetairoa McMillan are arguably the best duo in the Big 12, they just have so many question marks everywhere else. They struggle to run the football and protect their quarterback which is not good, and their defense has trouble stopping the run as they allowed over 230 rushing yards to Kansas State.
