Returning Horned Frogs shed light on what went wrong during the 2023 football season
In order to thrive in the future, one must understand the mistakes from the past.
With spring football starting on March 23, TCU must turn the page of the 2024 season after a disappointing 5-7 finish.
Multiple returning Horned Frogs were candid this week about what they believed went wrong in 2023. It was a year that was supposed to be a triumphant encore to the surprising national championship run in 2022, but instead it started with an upset loss to a four-win Colorado team and a season that spiraled into the Horned Frogs missing a bowl game.
Talking to some of the returning starters, it’s clear they all believe that talent wasn’t the issue.
“The accountability wasn’t what it was during our Natty run,” defensive tackle Damonic Williams said. “I would say that wasn’t because of the coaches at all. That was mainly because of the players, a lot of the players just thought the 12 games were an easy win in a sense and we deserved a better season than we had (in 2022). That’s not the case, we have to remember that.”
It’s the one thing that is often taken for granted when a program has immediate and surprising success as TCU did in the first year under head coach Sonny Dykes. Dealing with success can be just as challenging as dealing with adversity as teams go from the hunters to the hunted.
There’s a reason championship college coaches like Kirby Smart or Nick Saban are always finding new ways to motivate their players to keep them hungry after every successful season. We may roll our eyes when a player from a Michigan or Georgia talks about how people didn’t believe in them, but in actuality, it’s a testament to the culture of those programs that those players actually believed they were being overlooked despite lofty preseason rankings.
Those programs maintained a standard that had to be met. Now TCU is trying to re-establish its own standard.
“The focus right now is holding each other accountable,” quarterback Josh Hoover said. “It hurt to sit there and watch people playing bowl games and being at home. We’re all competitors, we didn’t want to sit at home and have a break. Like I’m sorry mom, I don’t want to be home for Christmas. We want to be playing bowl games and late in the season.”
Namdi Obiazor was another returner that experienced both the playoff run and last year’s disappointment. Like Williams and Hoover, he thought the primary reason for the struggles was a lack of buy in.
“I feel like there were certain people on the team that did their jobs, but I feel like it wasn’t everybody,” Obiazor said. “It wasn’t 11 people on offense, 11 on defense. There were some people that weren’t completely bought in and I feel like for football it’s important for everybody to buy in to win games.”
Obiazor is correct. Every part of the roster from special teams to scout team plays a crucial part in determining whether or a team can have a successful season.
For Williams, the standout defender said the lowest point of the season was the 41-3 blowout loss at Kansas State.
“It felt different, we felt ready, but after the first couple of plays I could see already that we were starting to lose it,” Williams said. “After that game, just looking at people’s faces, the coaches’ faces, there was a look of disappointment. I don’t want to feel like that ever again.”
So how does TCU avoid feeling that ever again? How do the Horned Frogs address the problem that tanked last season? Dykes opted to part ways with coach Joe Gillespie and brought in Andy Avalos to coordinate the defense while the Horned Frogs brought in a transfer class that valued production over potential.
But most of the change needed for a better 2024 will be some internal improvement from the players and their mentality.
“You have to have the courage to say things that are hard and that’s part of being a leader,” Hoover said. “It’s not easy being a leader, if it was everyone would be willing. You don’t have to call guys out, but you have to have conversations and sometimes they’re hard conversations and that has to happen in order to have a good team and to be successful.”
Once again talent won’t be an issue for TCU, but talent only matters so much if everybody in the program isn’t aligned as one. Have the Horned Frogs learned from the mistakes last year?
We’ll find out soon enough.
