TCU, Patterson work on pulling some good out of Arkansas loss
After only their fourth loss in 28 games, and their first at home in more than two years, the TCU Horned Frogs spent the weekend reminding themselves what they could gain from it.
“Once you start winning a lot, you feel like you’re unstoppable,” linebacker Sammy Douglas said. “And sometimes, you need to get woken up, get beat, and get back up.”
If that was the case for the Frogs, last week’s 41-38 loss in two overtimes to Arkansas might have done the trick.
Or not. The next 10 games will tell that story.
But coach Gary Patterson didn’t mind the sting of the reminder. The more painful a loss, the more he can tell about a team.
There wasn’t as many tears in that locker room, as much as I would have liked to have seen, for that close a ballgame, the way it turned out.
TCU coach Gary Patterson
on the aftermath of the Arkansas loss“If you go back two years ago, when we lost to Baylor, there wasn’t a dry eye,” he said. “Our kids wanted it bad. Maybe because you have a lot invested. It was an older football team, there was a lot invested.”
Saturday night was different.
“There wasn’t as many tears in that locker room, as much as I would have liked to have seen, for that close a ballgame, the way it turned out,” Patterson said. “A lot of that has to do with you have a lot of young guys that, they haven’t put in enough heat here, they haven’t put in that off-season work here. Which is what I’ve been saying from the very beginning.”
His point? The Frogs aren’t as experienced as it may appear on paper, particularly on defense.
Saturday’s loss was built on mistakes and missed opportunities down the stretch, from Kenny Hill’s celebration penalty to a blocked field goal to a missed read on the 2-point play Arkansas used to tie the game in the last minute.
“The last play we ran at practice on Thursday was that exact same play, the quarterback throwback off the reverse,” Patterson said. “It’s not like they surprised us. It was not a surprise.”
He paused, choosing his next words carefully, and just a bit playfully.
“Obviously, it was a surprise to the people out there covering it, which I probably hinted about later on.”
Factors like that perhaps make this a tougher loss than others to put behind. But Patterson shrugs. It’s got to be done.
“Losing is a disease. If you allow it to, it grows on you,” he said. “Around here, we get back to work, we go about our business, we don’t dwell on things we don’t need to dwell on unless you need to get better at it.”
There are not many players left who went through TCU’s last losing season, the 4-8 year in 2013. But there are enough, and it hasn’t been that long. And Patterson isn’t letting anyone forget that the last time Iowa State came to Fort Worth for an 11 a.m. kickoff, four years ago, it left with a win.
That was during a two-year period when TCU was 11-14. After that, a 24-3 stretch followed.
That stretch ended Saturday.
“What you have to understand, sometimes to go forward, you need to go back,” Patterson said. “I’m not saying that’s what we’re going to do. I’m just saying you have to learn from all the losses. And as coaches, I go back to what I said — people handle failure a lot better than they handle success. Coaches are the same way. It’s not the same team as last year. You may have to come up with a different idea for what you’re trying to accomplish.”
In other words, learn from a loss.
Carlos Mendez: 817-390-7760, @calexmendez
TCU vs. Iowa State
11 a.m. Saturday, FS1
This story was originally published September 13, 2016 at 4:09 PM with the headline "TCU, Patterson work on pulling some good out of Arkansas loss."