A week before ACU won at Idaho, Keith Patterson was asked why he wasn’t giving another quarterback a shot.

“They ought to probably pay attention to the first game,” he said. “We threw another quarterback out there.”

Then he threw another quarterback out there.

Tucker Parks started Saturday in Moscow, Idaho, and went 14-of-21 for 148 yards and two touchdowns. He ran for 74 more and another score. He didn’t turn it over once, and ACU won 41-39 for its first win of the season.

Asked Monday what changed, Patterson said, “Sometimes you just got to go with a gut feeling.” He also said Parks lost the job at Lamar because he put the ball in jeopardy. At Idaho, ACU won the turnover battle for the first time all year.

Last week I wrote that John David Black wasn’t the answer; Coach Patterson seemed to agree with me. But I also said Davila might be the next man up, and I missed the mark there.

I’m glad they won. But I also don’t think Saturday proved much yet; Mercer can.

“A bunch of individuals”

Eight days before the win, Patterson sat at his weekly press conference and didn’t sound like a guy with answers.

“What I see right now is just a bunch of individuals,” he said. He called his team “not connected” and said it didn’t have an identity on offense or defense. Then came the kicker: “Maybe it’s the lack of my leadership; I don’t know.”

That’s coming from a coach who won the conference the last two years. He also admitted he’s still figuring out his new job. For two seasons he called the defense himself. This year, Sam Bennett does the playcalling, and Patterson is taking a more hands-off approach, maybe due to the many new hats college football head coaches have to wear.

I respect him saying that at 0-3. It’s also the standard I’m holding this team to now. Everybody could see ACU played better at Idaho. What I want to know is whether that group of individuals turned into a team in one week.

The line showed up

After SFA, Patterson looked at the rushing numbers and said that “tells you that it was complete domination on their part.”

Eight days later: “Proud of our offensive line. Felt like they dominated the line of scrimmage.”

He wasn’t wrong. ACU ran for 244 yards, the fourth-most of Patterson’s tenure. Rovaughn Banks Jr. had 99 on 22 carries, and he’s the one who picked up a fourth-and-1 with under two minutes left to let ACU run out the clock.

Deonte Dean had the best day of anybody.

He scored on a 24-yard run and again on a 37-yard screen, with Colter Lynch and Kaden Carr clearing out the left sideline in front of him. Patterson said Dean was “five and six deep” at running back early in the year. With Alex Broome and two others out, ACU only had three backs available. Dean got his chance and scored twice.

Patterson gives the credit to the practice week. He cut practice time but kept the same number of plays, and he had the starters go at each other more. Tuesday opened with goal-line tackling. He said a couple of scouts who came by practice were surprised at how physical it was.

After SFA, I said this team’s problem was the roster, not toughness. Patterson said toughness, changed practice to fix it, and the line had its best game of the year. Big props to Coach Patterson; his guys were ready to go.

But this isn’t a fixed team, just not all of it yet. Idaho came in 0-3. ACU lost to Lamar by seven, and Idaho lost to Lamar 23-17. Two teams looking for their first win played each other, and one of them got it. I can’t tell from that whether the line is actually fixed or just had a good day against a bad matchup.

“Good enough to win defensively”

That’s how Patterson described his defense Monday. I’d say it was good enough to win by two.

Idaho put up 444 yards and 28 first downs. Quarterback Joshua Wood accounted for 363 total yards and all five Idaho touchdowns.

But the defense also won ACU the game, and that deserves credit.

With the score tied at 24 in the fourth quarter, Santana Miller forced a fumble in his first game of the season, and Boone Morris fell on it. Brandon Perez kicked a field goal, and two plays later Obi Udom beat Idaho’s center, knocked the ball out of Wood’s hands, picked it up at the 9 and scored a birthday touchdown. On Idaho’s next drive, Dillon Williams broke up a fourth-and-3 pass. Idaho had three straight possessions end in turnovers, and ACU scored 17 points off them.

Patterson said Udom is “probably playing as well as anyone on our defensive line right now.” It’s hard to argue after Saturday.

Then ACU went up 41-24 with 8:49 left, and it got scary. Wood drove 75 yards for a touchdown and hit a two-point conversion. Idaho’s defense got a stop. Wood drove 77 more yards and scored again with 1:46 left. It took Banks’ fourth-down run to end it.

Patterson said he was disappointed in the finish, and he should be. If you’re up 17 with less than nine minutes to go, that game should be over.

He took the points

After Texas Tech, I criticized Patterson for punting on fourth-and-6 from the Tech 48 with 6:34 left. So I owe him credit on this one.

After Miller’s forced fumble, ACU got eight yards on third-and-11 to the Idaho 34. Patterson said he was going to go for it until he saw the ball was closer to fourth-and-2. His staff had told him earlier in the drive that the kicking range started at the 35. He sent Perez out.

Perez made it from 51 and won UAC Special Teams Player of the Week for it. ACU won by two, so do the math.

Patterson also pointed to a play most people probably missed: a 55-yard punt late in the game that pinned Idaho inside its own 25. After SFA, he’d said special teams were the most consistent thing ACU had done all season. Saturday they were a big part of why ACU won.

How big was it?

Patterson thinks the win is a bigger deal than people understand.

“That was a bigger win than probably most people even realize,” he said. He talked about the Kibbie Dome’s history and the bowl banners on the walls, and said a staff member who used to coach at Idaho told him three times on the plane ride home how hard it is to win there.

I understand why he feels that way. It was a long trip; it’s a tough building, and his team was 0-3. But Idaho is 0-4 now. The Vandals have lost three games by one score this year, and this was one of them. They keep losing close games, and this time ACU was the team that benefited.

What stuck with me more was something else he said Monday: “Now you have to be able to handle success.”

Now Mercer

Patterson has started breaking the season into sets of three games. Lamar, Tech, and SFA were group one. Idaho, Mercer on Saturday, and the conference opener against West Florida are the third. He then framed the two home games as defending Wildcat Stadium.

“We’ve (only) lost five times here in five years,” he said. “We went undefeated at home last year. We’ve already lost one.”

That one was SFA, and he owned it. “I felt like we let everybody down,” he said. He added that he didn’t think his team competed that night.

He also explained why this year feels heavier: “You have inherited back-to-back championships. So now you’re getting everyone’s best.”

No. 23 Mercer comes to Abilene for the first time, and the Bears are struggling too. They’re 2-2 under first-year head coach Joel Taylor, a year after winning back-to-back Southern Conference titles. They beat East Texas A&M 23-15 and Presbyterian 62-3 to start the year, then lost 20-13 at home to Furman and 44-11 at Georgia Tech.

That makes Mercer a fair test. The Bears are ranked, so a win means something. They’ve also lost two straight, so a loss would be hard to explain away. If what we saw in Moscow is real, it should show up again Saturday.

After the Texas Tech game, Patterson said, “I can promise you we won’t be the same team three weeks from now as we are right now.”

Three weeks later is this Saturday: Family Weekend, at home, against a ranked team.

If ACU wins, Idaho looks like a turning point. If they lose, Idaho was one good afternoon against a winless team.