TCU football notes: Boykin will be back from wrist surgery by end of May, Patterson says

Trevone Boykin will be recovered from wrist surgery by the end of May or earlier, TCU coach Gary Patterson said.

“He’ll be good,” Patterson said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “He’s finishing up school, getting ready to go and doing all the other things he needs to do to have a great senior year.”

The quarterback from West Mesquite is coming off a school-record 3,901 yards and 33 touchdown passes in TCU’s 12-1 season last year. He played part of the season with the injury to his left wrist, on his non-throwing hand.

He had surgery April 3, missing the last week of spring practices to get a jump on recovery.

“We needed to grow up the young quarterbacks anyway,” Patterson said. “We just took him out the last two or three days of spring and let them run the show, because they needed it.”

Patterson said Boykin probably could have played without the surgery, but that the team wanted to make sure he could pitch the ball with that hand, if necessary.

No private throwing

There are no plans for the quarterback to throw with a private coach this summer.

Players such as Johnny Manziel and Cam Newton have worked with gurus such as George Whitfield to improve their throwing, sometimes while in college and sometimes to prepare for the NFL draft or combine.

Asked if Boykin would do something similar this summer, Patterson said, “No.”

Boykin said in an interview with the Star-Telegram in January that he wanted to improve his accuracy.

First Freeze

Freshman linebacker Mike Freeze is listed as a starting linebacker on the TCU post-spring depth chart, alongside junior Sammy Douglas. But Patterson said it doesn’t mean anything, and that, “It’s a long way until September.”

Freeze enrolled early and participated in spring training, along with two other early enrollees, linebacker Alec Dunham and cornerback DeShawn Raymond.

“As far as I’m concerned, we don’t have starting linebackers right now,” Patterson said. “We’ve got four or five guys that want to be starting linebackers, and guys that are with the first team.”

But Patterson added that Freeze and Dunham “both came a long way.”

Quarterback depth

Patterson said the main issue on offense in the spring was to prepare the backup quarterbacks, but that missing some injured receivers made it more difficult.

“We worked very hard at that, but it hurt us a little bit because really, we had three of our four starting wide receivers out most of spring,” Patterson said.

Deante’ Gray suffered a non-contact knee injury the first week, and Josh Doctson broke a bone in his hand the second week, and Ja’Juan Story had an Achilles problem. Patterson said Kolby Listenbee also battled some injuries.

But Patterson said overall, the receiver group has outstanding depth.

“We’ll have the best depth we’ve ever had at that position in a while, with the talent level,” he said. “It’s a matter of the young guys growing up to fill spots.”

Prediction confirmed

Iowa State coach Paul Rhoads said Gary Patterson was “very accurate” with his pre-game prediction that TCU wouldn’t make the College Football Playoff, even with a big victory in the season finale.

“I said to him, honestly, ‘Good luck if you’re able to beat us today,’ and he had one of those coaching intuitions that things were not going to go the right direction,” Rhodes said. “And he was obviously very accurate about his thought.”

Patterson told reporters two weeks ago, “I’m pretty good at gut feelings, and I saw all the articles through the week. I actually thought it was the kiss of death when we got moved to third.”

Rhodes was as surprised as anyone that TCU didn’t make the field.

“How do you jump to No. 3 and win 55-3 and drop like they did?” Rhodes said. “We knew we had our hands full that day against a great football team. It was a great football team that came out and did everything they could to perform well.”

This story was originally published April 21, 2015 at 1:08 PM with the headline "TCU football notes: Boykin will be back from wrist surgery by end of May, Patterson says."