Last Saturday’s game at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium felt like a battle of college football’s misfit toys. On the visitors sideline was Boise State, famous for the blue turf of its home stadium and a recent streak of 16 consecutive seasons with a bowl appearance. Hosting, of course, were our Memphis Tigers, a program with nary a losing season since 2014 and three Top-25 finishes securely in the record books. Yet somehow both the Broncos (Mountain West Conference) and Tigers (American Athletic) remain outside the dance hall as the SEC, Big 10, Big 12, and ACC continue to morph into a new quartet (Power 4?) of mega-leagues. Rejects always have each other … right?
On a sweltering final afternoon of September, the Tigers prevailed by a score of 35-32. It was the best game in the country not played by one of those “Power 4” programs. The win improved Memphis to 4-1 for the season with a bye week now before reigning AAC champion Tulane comes to town for a clash (a slash?) on Friday the 13th. It was an important victory for coach Ryan Silverfield’s team and confirmed three important truths we’ve learned about the 2023 squad.
• Resilient. For real. Every coach of every team in every sport likes to claim his group is “resilient,” that his players have the backbone to bounce back when necessary. While this can’t possibly be true for every team in America, it appears to be a quality these Tigers possess as a collective. When Memphis fell behind Boise State, 17-0, it appeared some shine had faded from the team in blue and gray. Wins over Bethune-Cookman and Arkansas State go only so far, and how much does a narrow win over Navy mean? But the Tigers bounced back in powerful fashion, scoring the game’s next 28 points. Better still, when the Broncos closed the Tiger lead to three points (28-25) midway through the fourth quarter, Memphis took possession and drove 75 yards, chewing up more than six minutes of playing time and scoring the touchdown (a one-yard scramble by Blake Watson) that proved to be decisive.
“We had an inexcusable, pedestrian start,” said Silverfield in his postgame comments. “That’s on me. I’ll take the blame. But our guys’ belief in what we’re doing is amazing. They fight, and they find a way to finish. That’s a team win. It took every single person.”
• Blake Watson is The Guy. At halftime of Saturday’s game, the Tigers saluted DeAngelo Williams, the greatest Tiger of all-time and the first Memphis player to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Fittingly, Tiger running back Blake Watson carried the ball 19 times for 113 yards for a Williams-like 5.9-yard average and scored two touchdowns, including that game-winner in the fourth quarter. Watson’s emergence separates this team from those of the last three seasons in which no Tiger ball carrier topped even 700 yards. Through only five games, Watson has 455 yards rushing, putting him on track for a 1,000-yard campaign, if not quite a DeAngelo Williams performance. Championship teams, universally, run the ball well. Keep an eye on the Old Dominion transfer as this season rolls along.
• The football gods are smiling. Late in the Tigers’ win over Navy, a Midshipman play that had resulted in a first down deep in Memphis territory was reviewed by the officials and determined to actually be short of first-down yardage. When Watson scored the Tigers’ final touchdown late in Saturday’s game, he dropped the ball before landing in the end zone. But another official review determined that Watson had broken the proverbial plane of the end zone with the football before it was dislodged. Not one, but two critical reviews have favored the Tigers (?!?) in a single month.
Senior linebacker Geoffrey Cantin-Arku made the play of the game against Boise State, blocking a third-quarter field goal attempt, picking up the ball and sprinting 80 yards to seize the lead (21-17) for the home team. The native of Quebec (and former Syracuse Orange) was asked after the game about his play, and what it might represent in a season, so far, going largely the Tigers’ way. “Last year, we didn’t fight like this,” he acknowledged. “The spirit in the locker room is different. We’ve all got each others’ back. We’re gonna come to work.”
