TCU, Patterson take stock at halfway point with bye finally near

Halfway through the season, Gary Patterson has come to realize something.

The TCU team he has is the TCU team he has.

Spectaular on offense. Flawed on defense. Unbeaten through six games.

He could hardly be more proud.

“I’ve got plenty of things to line up that we can get better at,” the Horned Frogs coach said Tuesday during his weekly press conference on campus. “But right now, I should appreciate that they’ve played their tails off.”

To get to 6-0, third-ranked TCU has had to make up for the loss of as many as seven defensive starters, win two comeback games on the road in the Big 12 – one on a most fortunate tip, the other from an 18-point deficit – and score 50 points or more in a school-record five consecutive games.

Quarterback Trevone Boykin has soared to fourth in the country in passing, receiver Josh Doctson is second in the country in touchdown catches, and freshmen like receiver KaVontae Turpin and linebacker Montrel Wilson have emerged to make unexpected impact. They are among 14 true freshmen and 15 redshirt freshmen who have had to play in a season that has unfolded in an entirely unexpected way for TCU.

But if they can get to 7-0 with a win at Iowa State this week, Patterson and the Horned Frogs will at last get a chance to take it all in.

“We’ve got to be one point better than Iowa State, then we get 12 days off, catch our breath and see how the last five games fall,” Patterson said.

TCU is almost finished with a four-game block Patterson called the most important of the season – at Texas Tech, home to Texas, at Kansas State and at Iowa State – because it contained three road games in four weeks, and it comes to finish a string of seven games in seven weeks to start the season.

Getting through the stretch will get TCU to its first bye week and a chance to refresh for a Thursday night home game against West Virginia. After that comes a “mini-bye” – nine days off before a road game at Oklahoma State.

“I knew we had to get to this break,” Patterson said. “And that’s without knowing what I was going to lose the players I lost.”

Senior safety Derrick Kindred, whose interception return for a touchdown started the second-half comeback last week, knew Patterson was right about the four-game stretch he kept talking about.

“Whatever he says, the majority of the time he’s right,” Kindred said. “I’ve been here four years, long enough to know that everything he says comes about true. I just have to stress it to the younger guys that this is going to be a grind. They’re starting to realize it now, and they’re maturing from it.”

The Horned Frogs won’t be at their best until the end of the season, Patterson said.

But they have to win with what they’ve got right now – a quarterback and receiver who can take over a game, a defense that is undersized and inexperienced but fast and athletic, and a coach who continues to appreciate it more and more.

“Defensively, we’ve got to start faster,” Patterson said. “We play like the defense we had in the second half, then you’re going to have a lot more success. Kind of waited around in the Texas Tech and Kansas State games – can’t do that. We’ve got to start faster this week.”

It may not be going according to his best-laid plans, but Patterson’s team is unbeaten, and he’ll take that.

“I’ve had fun and been 0-6 and had the same kind of problems,” he said. “To be 6-0 right now, I think we should just count our blessings and go forward.”

This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 6:10 PM with the headline "TCU, Patterson take stock at halfway point with bye finally near."