Sonny Dykes takes responsibility for TCU’s swing from making the national championship game in 2022 to missing bowl eligibility in 2023.
“[We] really didn’t do the little things right that it takes to win football games, and that really boils down to coaching,” he said at Big 12 media days Tuesday. “We’ve got to do a better job coaching this year. Certainly didn’t get the carry-over from the national championship run in ‘22 to ‘23 that we wanted to.”
“Had a heck of a run in 2022. It’s a fun year where everything went our way. We had some tremendous leadership. A lot of experience on that team and we lost a lot of that last year,” he said. “Now we’re ready to get back playing TCU football.”
Replacing that leadership and experience has been an uphill battle, but Dykes said TCU is making progress. He said teams can turn over half their roster year to year, and that after 2022, they lost a lot of the juniors to the NFL draft that they would usually rely on to become senior leaders. This year, TCU made sure that most transfers were able to join spring training to help fill the gaps, and the coaching staff is resolved to take a more proactive approach to team-building.
“We have to make sure that we don’t rely on our players to teach [leadership skills] and to pass that tradition on. That’s got to be something that we teach as coaches,” Dykes said. “So we’ve taken a much more active approach in trying to, number one, create relationships with our players to be very intentional about just getting together, spending time together doing things outside of football to earn each other’s trust and to get the guys, number one, to just know each other.”
The result? A “team-oriented team.”
“The guys care about each other. There’s not a whole lot of talk about individual accolades or getting to the league or any of that kind of thing. And the guys want to win, and the guys want to lay it on the line for each other and lay it on the line for TCU,” he said. “So it’s a great feeling team. It has the hunger that successful teams have and the determination that successful teams typically have.”
New look defense
The Horned Frogs’ defense will look quite a bit different next year thanks to new defensive coordinator Andy Avalos. TCU has used a three-man front in the past, which Dykes explained is counterintuitively hard to recruit, because those three guys have to be so big. The four-man front that Avalos is implementing, on the other hand, gives the Horned Frogs a lot of flexibility with who they can play on the edge, with just two traditional defensive linemen on the inside. Dykes thinks the new formation will help TCU with speed and pass rushing.
“I think that that’s going to be the biggest area of improvement for us is pressuring the quarterback. When you pressure the quarterback, that changes the game,” he said. “And we’re going to be able to throw a lot of different body types out there and guys who can run and guys who can be aggressive and we can create some good match-ups on the edge and also hold up against the run as a four-down as well.”
TCU finished last season in the middle of the Big 12 pack in sacks and rushing yards allowed per game, but it is bringing in multiple three-star transfer and freshman defensive linemen to bolster the unit for next season. They will be crucial because the sport is changing and so many quarterbacks now can “dissect you” if given the time, Dykes said. Dykes said pressuring the quarterback is becoming one of the most
“All have to do is look at the NFL and the two highest-paid positions are the quarterback and the guy who pressures the quarterback,” he said. “There’s so many effective and efficient offenses that people are running that I think it really puts a premium on pressuring the quarterbacks.”
Press conference transcripts courtesy of ASAP Sports. Read the full transcript here.
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