Takeaways, highlights, notables, sights, sound bites and learning experiences from USF's 34-31 road defeat at Memphis and a look ahead (after a bye week) to the Thursday, Nov. 6, ESPN primetime home game against the UTSA Roadrunners.
The Quick Read
* Following USF's heartbreaking 34-31 defeat at Memphis on Saturday afternoon, what does it all mean? Great question — with tons of potential answers. Let's cut to the chase. USF has no margin for error. If USF wins out to finish 10-2, there's a high probability that the Bulls will play in the American Conference championship game with a College Football Playoff berth on the line. The two cleanest routes:
1) USF wins out and Tulane wins out (beating Memphis, the teams play in a Friday night game on Nov. 7 in Memphis)
OR
2) USF wins out and Memphis wins out (beating Tulane and Navy, the Tigers also get Navy at home in a Thursday night game on Nov.27).
Stay tuned. November's proceedings will be fascinating.
* The 44-yard touchdown run by QB Byrum Brown, when he broke two tackles and hurdled another would-be defender, was a strong contender for the most spectacular play of his USF career.
* The USF bye weeks have been timed perfectly, splitting the season into three four-game sections. It's a good time for the Bulls to heal physically and mentally while preparing for the conference stretch run – home games vs. UTSA and Rice, road games at Navy and UAB.
* DB Jarvis Lee is having a sneaky good season. He's a one-man wrecking crew on the blitz and now leads USF with 7.5 tackles for a loss.
* Football momentum is real. When Memphis got on a roll during the fourth quarter, the Tigers' comeback seemed unstoppable. Almost everything went right for Memphis.
Game Takeaway
It was there for the taking. Then everything got taken away and the USF Bulls were left with an inexplicable 34-31 defeat at Memphis on Saturday at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.
USF (6-2, 3-1 American Conference) had its four-game winning streak halted, while allowing Memphis (7-1, 3-1) to climb back into the league's title race as the Tigers extended one of the nation's longest home winning streaks to 11 games.
The Tigers outscored the Bulls 17-0 in the fourth quarter, surging ahead for the first time since the opening quarter on a 10-yard pass from quarterback Brendon Lewis to receiver Cortez Braham Jr., with 1:07 remaining.
USF mounted a desperation eight-play, 41-yard drive and nearly forced overtime. On second-and-10 from the Memphis 24-yard line, QB Byrum Brown threw deep into the end zone for WR Keshaun Singleton, but it was incomplete. A holding penalty cost USF 10 yards and left place-kicker Nico Gramatica with a 52-yard attempt on the game's final play.
The snap was low and the hold wasn't perfect, but Gramatica got it cleanly into the air and it sailed just wide to the left.
"We've been really good in the fourth quarter and we weren't today,'' head coach Alex Golesh said. "I told the guys, 'Man, we're going to be in this situation again as a program, hopefully this year, where you've got to finish a game.'
"It ain't on Nico (Gramatica) at the end. I'm disappointed that we didn't score (a touchdown), but the only thing going on in my mind is where we're going to go in overtime with our first play. Nico is special. Nico is incredible. His process is elite. He will be in that situation again and there ain't a kicker in the country I'd rather have than Nico in our locker room.''
Golesh put the blame on himself.
"It's not on anybody other than me to make sure that we're able to go finish there in the fourth and we didn't,'' Golesh said. "We left it out there. So I'll take the blame … and I'll be better as well.''
Brown continued his run of big-time production. He rushed 21 times for 121 yards and two scores, while he was 26-for-43 passing with 269 yards and one touchdown.
"I wish I'd take my turnover early back,'' said Brown, referring to the game's fourth play from scrimmage, when he was intercepted by linebacker Everett Rousseau Jr., setting up a 19-yard touchdown run by Frank Peasant. "Maybe (we) go down and score (had the interception not been thrown) and then we wouldn't be in that predicament. But it's football. You just play the next play.''
On two occasions, USF built a two-touchdown lead (21-7 in the second quarter, 31-17 in the fourth), but it wasn't enough. Lewis, the Memphis QB, was outstanding (27-for-44, 307 yards, two touchdowns) in the absence of a normally dynamic Tiger running game.
LB Mac Harris said there was "a lot of hurt'' in the USF locker room.
"It's easy to feel better about yourself when you haven't prepared and when you didn't do all you could over the week,'' Harris said. "It's hard to accept the fact that we prepared the right way and we came in with the confidence we earned during the week, but we still didn't get the result that we wanted. We've got to just dig deeper during our bye week and figure out what we missed in our process, so we can get back rolling again.''
The big picture, of course, is what USF's defeat means in the American Conference title race.
Golesh said he and the Bulls remain focused on a much smaller picture — improving during the bye week, then preparing for the Nov. 6 home game against the UTSA Roadrunners.
"We've never looked ahead in any way,'' Golesh said. "We're in year three of building a sustainable program that's going to outlast the test of time. We've never looked ahead and we've never talked about a conference championship. I'm sure it has been talked about (by others) as it should.
"But for us, it has never been about anything past being the best version of ourselves today. What I told our guys is, 'Man, we're right here, right now. The only thing that matters is how we handle today. We lost — and it's never OK to lose — but we're working on our process one day at a time and we're growing and building. Elite teams get better as they go. We're going into November playing meaningful football games and that's what you want to do as a football program.''
The Big Play
On the Memphis go-ahead touchdown drive, the Tigers faced a fourth-and-8 at their 43-yard line with 3:30 remaining. An unsuccessful attempt and USF possibly closes out the game. QB Brendon Lewis swung it to RB Greg Desrosiers Jr., who was hemmed in short of the marker. But Desrosiers planted decisively, freezing a USF defender, then changed direction and raced for a 12-yard gain. It was a huge moment in the 11-play, 70-yard drive that allowed Memphis to take a 34-31 lead with 1:07 remaining.
Game Balls
* QB Byrum Brown who accounted for 390 yards and three touchdowns. Brown was 26-for-43 passing with 269 yards and one touchdown. He rushed 21 times for 121 yards and two scores.
* LB Mac Harris, who had a team-leading and career-high 13 tackles.
* RB Sam Franklin, who had a 73-yard touchdown run and 81 yards rushing overall.
* DB Jarvis Lee, who continued his aggressive play with seven tackles (3.5 tackles for a loss) and one sack.
* Freshman WR Jeremiah Koger, who had career-high five receptions for 78 yards and a 5-yard score, the fourth straight game in which he scored a touchdown.
* RB Nykahi Davenport, who had a career-long 60-yard run to set up a second-quarter touchdown.
* WR Keshaun Singleton, who had a team-high seven catches for 88 yards, including three consecutive receptions on USF's final drive to set up the game-tying field-goal attempt.
Notable Numbers
0 — Number of times previously that an Alex Golesh-coached USF team was defeated after holding a fourth-quarter lead.
8 — Number of 100-yard rushing games by QB Byrum Brown, who tied QB B.J. Daniels and RB Jordan Cronkite for fifth all-time at USF.
15 — Consecutive number of games in which USF had forced a turnover. The Bulls had no takeaways against Memphis.
25 — Career rushing touchdowns by QB Byrum Brown, who tied QB B.J. Daniels for third place (RB Marlon Mack is second with 32 and QB Quinton Flowers leads with 41).
73 — Length of the scoring run by RB Sam Franklin, the longest rush by a USF player in seven seasons (78 yards by Johnny Ford against UConn on Oct. 20, 2018).
295 — Rushing yards by USF, which had runs of 73, 60 and 44 yards. The Bulls have five straight games with 250 rushing yards or more.
564 — Total yards for USF. It was the fifth-highest yardage total in a USF defeat (behind 653 at UCF in 2017, 646 vs. UCF in 2020, 597 vs. Western Kentucky in 2015 and 583 at Memphis in 2023).
The List
If USF beats UTSA on Thursday, Nov. 6 – slated for a national TV audience on ESPN – it would mark the ninth different program from the state of Texas to be defeated by the Bulls in the 29-season history of USF football. At present, USF has defeated eight different programs each from Texas and Florida. Here are the states with the most USF victims:
* Florida (8) — Bethune-Cookman, Florida, Florida A&M, Florida Atlantic Florida International, Florida State, Miami, UCF.
* Texas (8) — Houston, North Texas, Rice, SMU, TCU, Texas State, Texas Tech, UTEP.
* North Carolina (7) — Charlotte, Davidson, East Carolina, Elon, North Carolina, NC State, Western Carolina.
* South Carolina (6) — Charleston Southern, The Citadel, Clemson, South Carolina, South Carolina State, Wofford.
* Tennessee (6) — Austin Peay, Chattanooga, Cumberland, Memphis, Tennessee Tech, UT-Martin.
* Illinois (5) — Illinois, Illinois State, Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois, Western Illinois.
* Alabama (4) — Auburn, Jacksonville State, Troy, UAB.
* Kentucky (4) — Kentucky Wesleyan, Louisville, Morehead State, Western Kentucky.
Next Up: UTSA
On Thursday, Nov. 6, the Bulls will host the UTSA Roadrunners (3-4, 1-2 American Conference) in a 7:30 "Salute To Service'' game at Raymond James Stadium. The Roadrunners, who had a bye last weekend, were blasted 55-17 at North Texas on Oct. 18. UTSA hosts the Tulane Green Wave this Thursday night on ESPN and will be playing back-to-back Thursday ESPN games when they come to Tampa.
In 2023 at San Antonio's Alamodome, UTSA defeated USF 49-21 in the only meeting between the two programs.
–#GoBulls–
