Patterson: TCU changes Air Raid signals to avoid tipping plays

TCU changed all its signals this spring because of how common the Air Raid offense is in college football now, coach Gary Patterson said Tuesday during a conference call with reporters.

“Even defensively, we changed a lot of different things going into spring because people knew our signals, different things,” Patterson said. “So we went back and we revamped everything.”

Patterson said the arrival of new offensive line coach Chris Thomsen and offensive analyst Sonny Dykes and their ideas also contributed to the new signals and looks for the offense under co-coordinators Sonny Cumbie and Curtis Luper.

“All those guys, they spent a lot of time from Signing Day in February to where we are here in April making sure that we weren’t hurting our guys because people knew what formations were called,” Patterson said. “Because there’s a lot of people that ran this offense.”

Patterson said subtle changes were necessary to the offense, besides signals. The Horned Frogs are coming off a 6-7 season after going 23-3 combined in their first two years in the Air Raid system.

“We tweaked a lot of things in our offense because so many people are running this, so many people knew signals,” Patterson said. “We went back, all signals are changed. How we’re signaling things, how we’re calling our offense — we redid everything.”

This story was originally published April 18, 2017 at 2:20 PM with the headline "Patterson: TCU changes Air Raid signals to avoid tipping plays."