Texas Tech started its game against No. 18 TCU on Saturday by mounting the longest drive of the season by snap count — 21 plays! — and only getting a field goal out of it.
Texas Tech just had the most plays in a drive by any team all season and got all of 3 points out of it
The Red Raiders had 21 snaps on their opening series.
The Red Raiders drove 70 yards on those 21 plays, taking up 8:52 of clock time. They traveled from their own 25 to the TCU 5 before a third-down incompletion brought up a chip-shot field goal by Clayton Hatfield to make the score 3-0, Tech.
There’d been a handful of 20-play drives this season, according to play data. Tulsa got a field goal out of one against Houston, Air Force scored a touchdown on one against Nevada, and Georgia State scored a TD on one against Troy.
Drives of 20-plus plays are exceedingly rare. The NCAA’s official record book says the longest one in FBS history is a 26-play, 14:26 field goal march by Navy against New Mexico in 2004. (The NCAA doesn’t specify if that’s by snap count, time, or both.)
How Tech pulled it off, briefly:
- a 6-yard run
- a 6-yard pass
- a 3-yard run
- a 4-yard pass
- an incompletion (but a pass interference call, so a first down)
- a 2-yard run
- a 7-yard pass
- a 2-yard run
- a 7-yard pass
- a 2-yard run
- a 2-yard run
- a 6-yard pass
- a negative-1-yard run
- a 6-yard pass
- a 6-yard pass
- a 2-yard run
- a 1-yard run
- a 2-yard run
- a 2-yard run
- an incompletion
- an incompletion
- and finally, Hatfield’s 22-yard field goal
Tech got five first downs on the drive despite not having a play of longer than 7 yards. The Red Raiders converted a fourth-and-1 on a Nic Shimonek QB sneak from the TCU 9, part of the most plodding, dinking-and-dunking drive of the season.
TCU went 63 yards in 10 plays and 5:14 to score a touchdown and go ahead immediately afterward.
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