High expectations met or not, Patterson says Frogs don’t win without Boykin at Minnesota

A day after acknowledging that quarterback Trevone Boykin didn’t “live up to his high expectations,” TCU coach Gary Patterson said the Horned Frogs wouldn’t have won last week without his competitiveness.

“There are some really good players that I watched play this weekend, but I don’t think there’s any of them that compete any harder than he does,” Patterson said Tuesday at his weekly press conference. “He took some shots. I mean, without him, we don’t win the Minnesota game.”

Boykin completed 26 of 42 passes (61.9 percent) for 246 yards, a touchdown and an interception and ran for a touchdown. He was sacked once. But it was the first time with him as the starting quarterback that the Horned Frogs failed to score 30 points.

“I said after the ballgame, you found a way to have 450 yards and go on the road and win a ballgame and, really, you left some points on the field,” Patterson said. “It wasn’t like that was the only 24 points you earned. There some that were there, so for us, your ceiling is a lot higher.”

Patterson praised Boykin for audibling to a run for his 19-yard score. Running back Kyle Hicks said it was nothing unusual from the senior quarterback.

“I think Trevone handled the first game how he handles every game,” Hicks said. “He went out there, he was cool, he was composed. A great leader, bringing energy and everything. He handled it very well.”

Boykin moved into second place on the all-time passing list at TCU last week. He has 7,399 yards, ahead of Max Knake’s 7,370 yards. Andy Dalton has 10,314.

“Bottom line is, Trevone Boykin, he’s a great athlete, and he’s a competitor,” Patterson said. “Simple as that. We all want to be real critical of him, but the bottom line to it is that we ask him do a lot of things. I think if anything, if he was guilty of anything, he tried to do too much. You just need to let the offense take care of itself. But I thought he did a great job.”

Patterson said he didn’t have to say anything to Boykin about how to handle the criticism.

“Like he said after the game, they were all critical of themselves and what they needed to do,” Patterson said. “They’ll all get back in the swing of what they need to do. He’s a senior. If he was a freshman, that’s a whole different animal. Or a sophomore. But Trevone’s already been through it and heard everything. He’s been told he couldn’t be a quarterback, all the way since he was a redshirt freshman. So he’s battle-tested. All the things you could say to him, he’s already read or it’s been said to him.”

This story was originally published September 8, 2015 at 6:22 PM with the headline "High expectations met or not, Patterson says Frogs don’t win without Boykin at Minnesota."