3 takeaways from BYU’s Big 12 championship game loss to Texas Tech

ARLINGTON, Texas — There will be no conference crown for BYU this year.

The Cougars were bested 34-7 by Texas Tech in Saturday’s Big 12 championship game at AT&T Stadium, suffering their second loss of the season and all but ending all hopes for a College Football Playoff berth.

3 takeaways

BYU faded fast after a strong start. The Cougars forced Texas Tech to punt on the first drive of the game, then traveled 90 yards across 14 plays to put LJ Martin in the end zone for an opening touchdown.

That ended up being BYU’s lone score of the day.

Texas Tech posted 34 unanswered points to bury the Cougars, with BYU never again entering the red zone.

Outside of the 90-yard opening drive, the Cougars managed just 110 yards on their next 12 possessions and turned the ball over four times — five if you count a failed fake punt.

Some of BYU’s offensive struggles can be blamed on an early injury to quarterback Bear Bachmeier, who appeared to hurt his ankle just before Martin’s touchdown and never quite looked the same after.

But the Cougar receivers couldn’t get much separation, the run game never truly got going and the offensive line was overmatched.

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Even with a healthy Bachmeier — who ended up settling for 16 passes at or behind the line of scrimmage out of 27 total attempts, only throwing downfield three times — too much was already going against BYU.

Texas Tech dominated in the trenches, and BYU paid for it. If you didn’t already believe the Red Raiders had the best defensive front seven in the country, Saturday should have changed your mind.

Texas Tech held the Cougars to just 60 rushing yards at 2.1 yards per carry. The Red Raiders sacked Bachmeier twice, hit him four times, racked up eight tackles for loss and forced three fumbles.

Red Raiders linebacker Ben Roberts also grabbed two interceptions, including an impressive one-handed snag.

Fellow linebacker John Curry racked up 10 tackles, and Heisman Trophy candidate Jacob Rodriguez added another 13.

In what this writer believes to be the play of the day, defensive lineman AJ Holmes burst through BYU’s offensive line to pummel Bachmeier and force a fumble, which essentially iced the ballgame in favor of the Lubbock faithful.

BYU’s Playoff dreams are dead. With the Cougars No. 11 in the College Football Playoff rankings before Saturday’s blowout, it’s safe to assume they won’t be part of Sunday’s final bracket reveal.

Perhaps a close loss to Texas Tech could have potentially swayed the Playoff committee to believe BYU belonged in the field, but the 34-7 loss prevents that from being the case.

Whether it’s fair or not that a team with 11 regular season wins, solid metrics and two losses against a top 5 squad is left on the wrong side of the Playoff bubble — that’s another conversation — it doesn’t change the ultimate result of BYU not being able to play for a national championship.

It was still a special season in Provo. The Cougars won 11 regular season games in a Power Four league and reached a conference championship game for just the third time in program history, and they did it with a true freshman quarterback who didn’t commit to the program until May.

BYU has a lot to be proud of. Saturday doesn’t change that.

But it does sting to fall short of the national title chase.