Patterson pressing Horned Frogs hard to improve

DCTF staff member Brad Hilliard spent Saturday afternoon in Fort Worth checking out the TCU practice, and filed this report, complete with a fiery Gary Patterson. Whether it’s over a plate of eggs at the Paris Coffee Shop or a burger and fries at Kincaid’s, there are generally two main conversations when Fort Worth locals gather this August: the oppressive heat that’s made the monsoon-like spring and early summer a distant memory, and TCU’s quest for their first football national championship since 1938. That hopeful anticipation isn’t just aggressive optimism on the part of fans wearing purple-tinted spectacles, though. The Horned Frogs are a trendy pick to earn a spot in the College Football Playoff and nearly every national publication lists quarterback Trevone Boykin as a Heisman favorite. Heck, even we here at DCTF broke from fifty-six years of tradition and will publish a special TCU season preview magazine that will hit newsstands later this month. Given how hard his program has had to scratch and claw for respect in the seventeen years since he set foot on campus, you might expect Gary Patterson to be reveling in the limelight at least a little bit. You would be wrong. On a visit to a TCU practice this weekend, the 104-degree heat had nothing on the intensity of Patterson describing the frustration of preparing a defense tasked with replacing five starters from last year’s 12-1 campaign. “Defense didn’t come prepared today,” Patterson said, pointing out the unit’s difficulty in pre-snap preparation and lack of emotion. Drawing particular ire was the youthful and inexperienced linebacking corps – which is likely to rely on significant contributions from redshirt freshman Ty Summers and early-enrollee true freshmen Mike Freeze and Alec Dunham. All three drew praise for their work in spring practices, but the coach said the linebackers have not progressed in the team’s first four practices of the summer. “Right now, we couldn’t beat anyone on our schedule,” Patterson fumed, “but we’ve got 26 days to figure it out” Is this an omen of a significant drop off from nearly two decades of consistently superior defensive play at TCU, or a motivational tactic from a coach looking to get the most out of his team? We’ll figure that out September 3^rd, when the Frogs open their season at Minnesota.