What Happened with Mustangs' Offense in Loss to TCU

More a case of how plays were executed, not effort or planning against Horned Frogs

SMU's offense was good enough to kick field goals when they put drives together. That's always costly. Not just losing the additional four points, but also momentum, which can kill any chance of winning. TCU also contributed a lot to that.

"They've got a good team," offensive coordinator Casey Woods said Tuesday. "They accepted the challenge over there. When you don't execute some of those simple things early, there's some throws missed, decisions made and some things like that. When you make plays like that against an opponent like that then they expose you just like they were able to do."

For an offense that looked good in two games, playing a pair of Big 12 teams may have given the Mustangs a chance to see what they've got to improve. It also helped quarterback Preston Stone, who hasn't ducked any of that.

"He's hard on himself," Wood said. "The best players are the ones that are the hardest on themselves and really evaluate themselves the hardest. He's not shied away from it at all. He came in, had conversations with a number of our coaches about 'Hey, this was my mindset going into the game. This was it post the game. This is good for me.'

"He embraced the evaluation, some of the criticism and things that showed up in that game. He really had a good practice (Tuesday). He's still in that leadership role on our team. Maybe it's some of the first times he's experienced some of the (adversity), four-time state champion or whatever he was."

With the biggest non-conference games out of the way, they can focus on their last season in AAC ahead of jumping to the ACC next year. There are people in the background putting all that data stuff together for that planning, but the focus for Rhett Lashlee and everybody is staying on this year. Now they just have to find some consistency on offense.

"We've got to do a much better job coming out in the second half," Woods said. "I don't think it's a lack of intensity or anything like that or lack of focus even, it's just there's a measure of execution that's taking place and sometimes the flow of the game changes on you. We've got to be able to offensively handle that."

The rest of the season starts Saturday with Charlotte coming to town. The Ponies will play at 6:30 p.m. at Gerald J. Ford Stadium on ESPNU and fuboTV. You can hear the game on The Ticket 96.7 FM and 1310 AM.