MMQB: Collapse

The Frogs suffered their first loss of the season in frustrating fashion on Saturday.

TCU had an absolute meltdown on Saturday, blowing a 28-7 lead to UCF and losing by a final score of 35-34. The Frogs looked unstoppable in the first half and completely fell apart in the second half as the defense gave up 28 second-half points and the offense sputtered down the stretch. This was an awful loss any way you look at it and the Frogs will need to regroup quickly with a trip to Dallas to play SMU on the schedule for Saturday.

The Good

Josh Hoover: I have a few concerns about this TCU football team moving forward but I can say with confidence that Josh Hoover is not one of them. Hoover was incredible on Saturday as he completed nearly 70% of his passes for 402 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions. Through three games, Hoover has completed 69.7 percent of his passes for 1,022 yards, eight touchdowns, and no interceptions. That is an awesome stat line. On Saturday, Hoover continued to look comfortable, confident, and decisive by making solid decisions with the ball. He has the arm strength to make every throw on the field and showed off impressive touch on his passes on Saturday as well. The long touchdown to Jack Bech was an absolute dart that showcased both his arm strength and touch. The Frogs are set at quarterback with Hoover at the helm.

Wide Receivers: The only TCU player with arguably a better game than Josh Hoover was his favorite target of the day; Jack Bech. Bech caught nine passes for 200 yards and a touchdown against the Knights on Saturday. Bech is looking like a breakout star at wide receiver, having success at both inside and outside receiver and attacking all three levels of the field. Savion Williams had another solid game with two very impressive touchdown catches. Williams showed why many fans believe he is an NFL-caliber wide receiver with a contested catch in double coverage on a jump ball for a touchdown and a body control catch on a pass thrown yards behind him on a post route for another touchdown. Eric McAlister had a strong game for the second straight week with four catches for 54 yards and a touchdown. JP Richardson was good against UCF as well with five catches for 46 yards. TCU has a plethora of dependable weapons at wide receiver.

Pass blocking: I have been very impressed with the pass blocking from TCU’s offensive line this year. Hoover consistently had a clean pocket to throw from on Saturday as for the second straight week, he was not sacked. Some of this is scheme-based in that TCU does not take a lot of deep shots, but the pass-blocking performance from the offensive line has been impressive nonetheless.

Blocked kicks: TCU special teams accomplished something I had never seen before in that they blocked three kicks in one game. Props to the kick-blocking unit and the special teams coaches for identifying a weakness in UCF’s field goal unit and taking advantage.

The Bad

Defense: The TCU defense had an atrocious performance against UCF on Saturday. UCF racked up 513 yards of total offense. Over 500 yards. In one game. That is not good. UCF has a very strong rushing attack with a great running back in RJ Harvey but the Frogs have to do a better job stopping the run moving forward. Harvey averaged over six yards per carry on his way to 180 rushing yards and two touchdowns. He was not the only UCF player having success on the ground as the Knights averaged 5.4 yards per carry as a team for 289 total yards on the ground. Credit to the UCF coaching staff for solid creativity in the running game with misdirection and read options that consistently put the defense in conflict (something the TCU coaching staff should look into). That being said, TCU’s defense got too confused by eye candy in the backfield and needs to adjust with plenty of creative offenses on the schedule for the rest of the season. The defensive line ran out of gas after the first half and was pushed around in the second half by the UCF run-blocking unit. The first half wasn’t necessarily a great performance from the defensive front but they held their own and gave the defense a chance. The second half was a completely different story and it resulted in UCF scoring 28 points after halftime.

An inability to make tackles on KJ Jefferson was also an issue. He is notoriously a hard quarterback to tackle, but there were too many quarterback pressures that should have been sacks. Getting UCF into third in long situations where they would have to run drop-back passes was a key to the game and not finishing sacks meant missed opportunities to force obvious passing situations.

The secondary did not have a good game either as they surrendered 230 yards and three touchdowns through the air. Kobe Hudson torched the TCU defense with six catches for 145 yards and two touchdowns. Hudson is a speedy receiver who was not a good matchup for JaTravis Broughton who is a bigger cornerback, better suited to cover bigger, physical receivers. I would have liked to see LaMareon James get a chance to cover Hudson as a faster cornerback who had a very good spring and fall camp. I would suggest that TCU should have rolled a safety over the top of Hudson every play but the safeties had to be near the line of scrimmage because of how dominant UCF’s rushing attack was. As a result, play-action passes and RPOs killed the Frogs, getting linebackers and safeties to step up to stop the run, only for Jefferson to throw the ball over their heads. To top it all off, the Frogs gave TCU fans some nostalgia by giving up a touchdown on a wheel route to a running back for old-time’s sake. This was an inexcusable game defensively for TCU.

Running game: I am hopeful that Sonny Dykes talked to Kirk Saarloos and had him draw up an arm care program for Josh Hoover because he is going to be throwing the ball a lot this year. The Frogs do not have a dependable rushing attack. The play calling on Saturday displayed that the coaching staff is well aware as TCU handed the ball off to their running backs only 14 times in a game that TCU led by 21 at one point. Part of this is on the offensive line and an inability to create movement on the line of scrimmage. Part of this is on the running backs who did not do a great job of making the first defender miss on Saturday. Part of this is on the coaching staff because, for all the creativity and great play design in the passing attack, the rushing game was bland outside of one Savion Williams Wild-Frog snap (side note, running the Wild-Frog on your own 34 on a random first and ten is objectively hilarious). The bottom line is that TCU does not have a very effective ground game and will be very dependent on Josh Hoover and the receivers to move the ball.

Second-to-last offensive drive: Specifically, the first two plays that were called on TCU’s second-to-last possession of the game. TCU had the ball with four and a half minutes left on the clock and a six-point lead. The TCU defense had not been able to slow down the Knights in the second half and it felt like the Frogs desperately needed a score. The clock was not going to be a factor if UCF got the ball back since UCF had timeouts and the two-minute warning to stop the clock. The Frogs decided, however, to run back-to-back high-completion percentage passes near the line of scrimmage to ensure the clock would continue to run. I do not know why in the biggest drive of the game up to that point, TCU went away from the intermediate passing game that UCF had not stopped all night. Hoover had over 300 yards and four touchdowns at that point. Let him push the ball down the field and close out the game.

Maintaining a lead: I am very concerned about TCU’s ability to hold onto leads with depleted depth on the defense and an inability to run the ball. The Frogs are not going to be able to effectively chew the clock barring a turnaround from the rushing attack and were completely worn out defensively in the second half against UCF. Maintaining leads could be a recurring issue in 2024.

Play of the Game

Josh Hoover dropping a 50 yard bomb right in the bucket was excellent to watch.