TCU football: What is being said and written about the No. 4 ranked Horned Frogs

Week by week, more and more pundits are discovering that the TCU Horned Frogs are indeed the story of the 2022 college football season.

What took them so long?

Picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 preseason polls, the Horned Frogs have slowly climbed in the polls and are now perched as the College Football Playoff Committee’s No. 4 ranked team.

After the Horned Frogs beat Texas 17-10 to improve their perfect records to 10-0 overall and 7-0 in the Big 12 on Saturday, here’s a look at what others are saying outside of Fort Worth:

From Pete Mundo, Heartland College Sports, on the way TCU beat Texas:

TCU couldn’t have asked for a better way to win this game than the way they did. This wasn’t TCU’s ideal game. The offense wasn’t high-flying, but rather it was the defense that got it done. And since they were in the primetime ABC slot, they had more national eye balls than they probably had for most of their other games this season. And they won this game on defense and in fairly ugly fashion behind their running game.

From Chris Peterson, Fansided, jumping on the bandwagon:

TCU clinched a spot in the Big 12 title game with a 17-10 win over Texas and once again proved they are legitimate. TCU is a real contender and people need to quit dismissing them.

From Dave Wilson, ESPN, on how defense won the game against the Longhorns:

The Horned Frogs had to adjust from their usual offensive fireworks due to Texas’ defensive pressure, instead using a stifling defense of their own to hold Texas to 199 total yards, its fewest in a home game since the Big 12 began play in 1996. Bijan Robinson had just 29 rushing yards on 12 carries, his fewest in the past two seasons, and Texas’ three offensive points (the Longhorns’ lone touchdown came on a fumble return late in the fourth quarter) were its fewest at home since a 66-3 loss to UCLA in 1997. And TCU did it in front of 104,203 fans, the second-largest crowd in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium history.

From Bill Connelly, ESPN, using statistics to show TCU’s improvement:

While the Horned Frogs have certainly improved offensively this season, their defense has leaped from 116th to 34th in defensive SP+ and carried serious weight in Austin, Texas, on Saturday night.

With the offense slowed by a dominant Texas defensive front, TCU’s defense faced a Longhorns offense that was averaging 6.6 yards per play and 36.1 points per game — against a top-10 strength of schedule, no less — and allowed 3.3 and 3, respectively.

From Heather Dinich, ESPN, on how all the Horned Frogs got to do is win out and they are in the playoffs:

If TCU finishes as undefeated Big 12 champion, the Horned Frogs are in. If they finish as one-loss Big 12 champs, they’ve still got a shot, but it becomes far more questionable. With the SEC and Big Ten champions taking the first two spots, one-loss TCU has to be concerned about two SEC teams getting in, as well as the Pac-12 champion. Even with a conference title, TCU might not win a debate against Tennessee, especially if four-loss Texas doesn’t finish in the CFP top 25.

From Morgan Moriarity, Bleacher Report, on how the Horned Frogs should be favored in final two regular-season games:

TCU’s last two games of the regular season are against Baylor on the road and Iowa State at home. The Horned Frogs should be favored in both of those. If TCU’s defense plays as well as it did on Saturday night, an undefeated TCU Big 12 champion on Selection Sunday doesn’t seem all that unlikely.

From Pat Forde, Sports Illustrated, who found a few interesting stats to ponder:

Here’s a stat: seven of TCU’s 10 wins have been by 10 points or fewer, and six of those have come in a row. If the Frogs beat Baylor by that spread or less Saturday, they will be the first team since 1976 (Colgate) to win seven in a row by 10 or fewer.

But more to the point of whether this is sustainable until the playoff, here’s another stat: TCU is the first team to reach 10-0 with that many wins of 10 points or fewer in 28 years, and one of just three in the last 43 years. The others: Alabama 1994, Penn State 1985 and McNeese State 1979 (which was an FBS—or Division I-A—program at the time).

All three of those teams finished the regular season undefeated, but all three lost in the postseason. The Crimson Tide were 12-0 before being defeated by Florida in the SEC championship game; the Nittany Lions were 11-0 and lost a de facto national championship Orange Bowl to Oklahoma; and McNeese was 11-0 before it lost the Independence Bowl to Syracuse.

From Sam Khan Jr., The Athletic, on coach Sonny Dykes’ breaking with his past:

The Horned Frogs have also done what no Dykes team has done since 2018 in winning its first two games in November. In his last three years at SMU, the Mustangs started a combined 20-0 but finished 4-8 in November and December those three seasons.

In October, Dykes said “this is a different team. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past here or where I’ve been. We’re going to write a different story.”