How many teams will the Horned Frogs outperform in ACC play this season?
TCU Football will play 11 games vs. opponents from Power 4 conferences in 2024: non-conference games at Stanford and SMU of the ACC along with a nine-game Big 12 schedule. It’s a slate that will certainly challenge a Horned Frogs squad that missed a bowl game in 2023 after reaching the National Championship following the 2022 season. TCU was picked tenth in the preseason Big 12 poll and is projected for only 7.5 wins this season per DraftKings Sportsbook – it’s fair to say the national expectations are tepid at best for the Horned Frogs in 2024, so any prediction of success can probably be considered a hot take. After making bold predictions for the Big 12 last week, it’s time to go out on a limb with a hot take for the Horned Frogs season that is sure to land on Freezing Cold Takes should TCU falter during non-conference play.
TCU will win more ACC games than multiple ACC teams
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On the TCU side of this prediction, the Horned Frogs get two road games vs. ACC foes, traveling to Palo Alto, CA for the season opener vs. Stanford and a trip to Dallas to Battle for the Iron Skillet vs. SMU in Week 4. Stanford is entering the second season of the Troy Taylor era, bringing back breakout star receiver Elic Ayomanor, an All-Pac 12 honorable mention as a redshirt freshman. However, the Cardinal ranked dead last in defensive performance in the Pac 12 and bottom-three in the league on offense. It won’t be an easy contest, and TCU was upset as a heavy favorite in the season opener in 2023, but as 8.5-point road favorites per DraftKings Sportsbook, TCU is projected to emerge victorious. The more difficult game on paper for the Horned Frogs will be cross-metroplex rivalry showdown vs. the Mustangs, in the final scheduled edition of the rivalry to be played in Dallas. SMU is projected to have its best team in four decades now in its first season in a power conference, with major returning talent including high-pedigree prospects and All-AAC QB Preston Stone. All preseason projection models have the Ponies as a favorite: SP+ has SMU as 4-points better on a neutral field, Beta Rank shows TCU as a 4.78-point underdog, and KFord gives TCU just a 35% chance at the win. The Horned Frogs will have to roll into Gerald J. Ford Stadium as an underdog and pull off the upset to earn this ACC victory. However SMU has only won the Iron Skillet four times this millennium – two of which came while current TCU head coach Sonny Dykes was leading the Ponies – and has not defeated TCU in Dallas since 2005. Despite all the suggestions of the spreadsheets, I’ll suggest the Frogs have a great chance to pick up another ACC win, for a total of two during the regular season, with possibility to add more in a bowl game or Playoff scenario.
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Despite now being a 17-team league, the ACC schedules only eight conference games per season, allowing its teams to stack up an additional non-conference contest. To be fair, some schools still take on at least one challenge in those four non-con opportunities or are forced into the game vs. Notre Dame, while others simply hope to get another step closer to bowl eligibility with an extra walk-over win (e.g. Syracuse faces a non-con gauntlet of Ohio, Holy Cross, UNLV, and UConn). Over the last four seasons, the ACC has had six teams finish with fewer than two wins in league play, with multiple teams doing so in 2020 and 2022. In 2024, only Stanford has a conference win total on DraftKings under 2, but there are another five programs projected at 2.5 that could easily drop into the under bucket.
Devil’s advocate hot take…It is similarly likely that SMU has more Big 12 wins than multiple Big 12 teams. The Mustangs will be favored to win home games vs. BYU & TCU. While the Big 12 does play a nine-game league schedule. there are still four teams with projected conference win totals of 2.5: Arizona State, BYU, Cincinnati, and Houston.