Deep breaths, everyone. After last week’s 21-point collapse while hosting UCF, the stage was set for a bounce-back game against cross-town little brother SMU, whom TCU has consistently dominated. It was apparent within the first six minutes of play that Saturday wouldn’t be the Froggies’ day. Basically, everything that could have gone wrong for the good guys did. Sonny Dykes arrived at his fifth Iron-Skillet showdown having never lost (twice as a Mustang, twice as a Horned Frog). TCU turned the ball over five times — three lost fumbles of five total on the turf with two interceptions. Two were returned for immediate defensive scores, and the special teams unit surrendered a punt return for a touchdown and a kickoff return that could easily have been one.
The visiting Frogs were down 17-0 before most tailgaters even made it to their seats, and only three of those were scored by the Mustang offense. TCU settled and charged back with two quick scores, and it seemed spectators would be rewarded with an entertaining shootout. Sadly, for Purple Nation, the wheels fell off before the half, and the Ponies galloped into the locker room with a 38-21 lead that the purple people just couldn’t reel in.
Considering only offensive scores, TCU should have been leading 21-20, but their massive blunders and flat-out bad luck kept the Frogs in the toilet of a game everyone West of 635 would like flushed from their collective memories.
Officiating immediately became a point of contention during this contest. It wasn’t but a few snaps into the game that SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings took off on a designed run. He was stood up and stripped of the ball, but the official prematurely blew the whistle, claiming the QB’s forward progress was stopped and the play dead well before his knee or body found the turf. SMU would only go on to kick a 3, but in retrospect, it was demonstrative of the woes the Frogs would continue to experience with this specific crew. A sputtering TCU returned the second-half kickoff for a touchdown that was called back because of a phantom holding penalty that even the completely inept CW broadcast crew couldn’t identify. The aforementioned, along with a questionable Josh Hoover fumble — he was down — that was returned for a touchdown during the first quarter inspired Dykes to politely share his thoughts with the zebra herd. The crew responded with consecutive unsportsmanlike penalties on the head coach and ejected him from the game, which rarely ever happens in college ball. Dykes later called his banishment unwarranted but did apologize to the TCU community. I’m not asserting he intended to be thrown out, but Dykes was a former Red Raider baseball player, and a manager getting himself tossed to spark a sputtering team is a well-known move on the diamond. I’m also assuming this officiating crew knew they were losing control of a chippy game where every iffy call had gone against the Funkytowners and were tired of being reminded of their own ineptitude.
It’s important to have perspective on this matchup for TCU fans. This loss hurt for Purple Nation, and, as my wife can attest, I was in quite the mood most of Saturday evening. Every local outlet called the game an embarrassment. It was, and it wasn’t. I coached high school football for many years, so while it’s easy to bag on players and coaching, the beauty and horror of football as a sport is the chaos — sometimes you’re just unlucky no matter how good your preparation was. Ask Kansas State, who suffered a similarly terrible performance riddled with turnovers at BYU in the night game they were favored in. The bounces and calls kept benefiting TCU’s second most consistent rival (Baylor being the first), and it sucked. But a 24-point loss against a team you’ve beaten 18 times this century isn’t that embarrassing. It is because it was SMU. The Highland and University Park collective are riding too high to acknowledge their little-brother status. TCU fans’ anger with the coaches and the local media’s agape reaction reinforce this. Ten years ago, the Frogs pummeled the Ponies 56-0 for the most lopsided win in Iron Skillet history — that’s pretty embarrassing. Another decade previous, the Disciples dunced the Methodists 44-0, not as awful but much worse than Saturday. SMU accepting a nine-year internship before they receive revenue shares from a conference playing their games on the CW … you get the idea. 37-20 TCU is the average score of the 24 meetings for the Iron Skillet since 2000, even factoring in Saturday’s suckfest. These are just a few talking points for the next time a Shmoo fan wants to talk about this week’s game, let alone how good they used to be in the 1970s and ’80s when their parents were in diapers.
The real problem with TCU’s team thus far is that it isn’t — a team, that is. Right now, it’s just an overpowered passing attack, not even a complete offense. Defensively, the Frogs look similar to the past couple years but without the big plays. Even in Gary Patterson’s final few years, and since, the Frog D of the early aughts is simply a treasured memory. The national title team achieved the impossible with a porous group that was opportunistic. Currently, there’s just no playmaking going on, but fans need to give Andy Avalos’ system and coaching time to root and the opportunity for the new coordinator to field at least a year’s worth of his own players.
Dykes’ job is likely safe, which might sound strange considering the direction TCU is trending and his recent removal from a rivalry game, but it’s not time to upend everything because of a year of close losses and a bad day against SMU, and TCU Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati knows that.
Kendal Briles, however, is already fired as far as I’m concerned. His hire was dubious from a culture perspective, and his resume shouldn’t have catapulted him to the position, either. His offense has been Dak Prescott-esque (great stats, few dubs) since he arrived. I’m willing to bet Briles and Dykes go into their Sunday meeting every week with the same resolve to establish a running game as I do to stop eating an entire frozen pizza by myself every Friday night. We both mean it at the time, but actually doing it — or not doing it, in my case — is something different and increasingly elusive. Josh Hoover is averaging more than 45 pass attempts per game against opponents who weren’t paid to show up and lose, which is far too many. Fort Worth witnessed first-hand the cost of that system against UCF, when even an average rushing attack could have easily put the game on ice but instead blew the door off the hinges and allowed the Knights to literally rush right through it. There is too much pressure on Hoover — or, really, any quarterback — having to execute that style, especially as a sophomore. The now-immortal Max Duggan took years before he was competent enough to consistently navigate a system that demanded much less of his arm. Sure, some are capable, but predicating your entire philosophy around having one player serve as the sole linchpin of the offense is a fool’s approach. Hoover performed shakily against the Mustangs — he surrendered two fumbles and threw two interceptions — and the game was lost. He shouldn’t be required to bear the responsibility alone, even as a quarterback. The sophomore isn’t involved in any meaningful read-option plays, making recognition exceedingly simple for opposing linebackers to sniff out the few actual rushes. Simple handoffs out of spread formations with an offensive line that pass blocks — “well,” I should add — 50 times a game is not a commitment to a balanced attack. This single-minded approach is also causing an extraordinarily talented group of receivers to squalor for receptions because the secondary feels no threat to reinforce the line of scrimmage.
I’ve been critical of Briles in the past, so much so that I’ve had to question my own bias — anyone who knows me personally can confirm I detest introspection — and have even defended him at times while searching for other solutions, but it’s never been more clear. Briles has bamboozled the TCU staff to this point and will be fired this season unless he can change who he is as an offensive mind. Sadly, for onlookers, as my darling wife frequently preaches, “Shoes don’t stretch, and men don’t change.”
