TCU must ‘score more points,’ but Patterson won’t evaluate program until end of season
TCU coach Gary Patterson made it clear that the offense has to score more points.
The Horned Frogs had one of their worst offensive days in years in a 24-6 loss at West Virginia on Saturday, the fewest points scored since the 2016 regular-season finale against Kansas State.
For the season, TCU is averaging 24 points a game — the second-worst in the Big 12, trailing only winless Kansas.
“The bottom line to it is we need to score more points,” Patterson said earlier this week on the Big 12 coaches teleconference. “They know it. We know it. We don’t really need anybody to tell us. We’ve been doing this for a while here at TCU.”
Outside of that, though, Patterson isn’t ready to draw any conclusions on the program. He made a number of offseason adjustments in hopes of jump-starting the offense, including hiring Jerry Kill to oversee the entire operation, stripping Sonny Cumbie of play-calling duties in favor of Doug Meacham and moving Jarrett Anderson to coach the offensive line.
But Patterson wasn’t ready to offer any sort of evaluation on the offense after seven games and going into a bye week.
“You know me, I evaluate at the end of the season,” Patterson said. “That’s when we’ve always evaluated. If you’re not careful, you spend all of your time evaluating and you don’t win ballgames. We’ve got two ballgames left. Right now we’re trying to beat Kansas and that’s what we worked on today and recruiting. This being an off week recruiting is a priority along with preparing for Kansas.
“We’ll evaluate like we always have at the end of the season and do what we think we need to do to get better.”
One pressing issue facing TCU has been it’s O-line play. The unit had a lot of turnover, losing its top three tackles and best interior lineman to graduation last year, as well as a position coach change with Anderson replacing Chris Thomsen.
Again, Patterson has liked the progress he’s seen from the unit. He mentioned a number of factors contributing to their inconsistencies: graduate transfer and left tackle T.J. Storment didn’t have spring ball to get accustomed to his new offense; Andrew Coker is a redshirt freshman starting his first year at right tackle; starting guard Austin Myers missed the West Virginia game with an illness; and guard Wes Harris was lost to a season-ending injury.
“Do we need to play better? We will play better as this group grows up,” Patterson said. “We’ve gotten better since four games ago.”
At the end of the day, Patterson sees promise. If the offense executes on a couple plays, such as quarterback Max Duggan airmailing an open Taye Barber in the end zone on Saturday, maybe the storyline changes.
“For us, these guys fought and gave ourselves a chance,” Patterson said. “Those guys [West Virginia] are undefeated playing at home. We added to that total. We weren’t happy about it. We wish we played better on both sides of the ball.”
Coleman on watch list
TCU freshman defensive end Khari Coleman was added to the Ted Hendricks Award watch list on Wednesday, which honors the nation’s top defensive end.
Coleman has a team-high 9.5 tackles for loss, which is third in the Big 12 and tied for 15th in the country.
TCU product Jerry Hughes won the 2009 Ted Hendricks Award.
