TCU’s post-national title game tailspin hits a new low: What happened to the Horned Frogs?

It was only 22 months ago that Sonny Dykes and TCU could do almost nothing wrong.

The Horned Frogs were the surprise story of the 2022 season. Their unlikely run to the College Football Playoff national championship game — which included a 12-0 start, heart-stopping finishes, the “Hypnotoad”, psychedelic postgame victory videos and a Fiesta Bowl upset of Michigan — endeared them to casual fans. They were the pesky perpetual underdogs who kept finding ways to win.

Halfway into the 2024 season, it seems as if nothing is going right. TCU’s 30-19 loss on Friday night to Big 12 cellar-dweller Houston is just the latest example. Lately, the Horned Frogs keep finding ways to lose.

Behold a sampling of their recent misfortunes:

• On Sept. 14, TCU coughed up a three-touchdown second-half lead and a double-digit fourth-quarter lead to lose 35-34 at home to UCF.
• A week later, crosstown rival SMU — which TCU has played since 1915 but is choosing not to after the current series contract ends in 2025 — dropped 66 points on the Horned Frogs and beat them by 24. Dykes was ejected after earning two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties for berating the officials.
• On Friday, the Cougars traveled to Fort Worth having not scored since Sept. 14 and holding the nation’s least productive offense in points per game, scoring rate and points per drive, according to TruMedia. The Cougars roared to 24 first-half points and an 18-point halftime lead.

“That was a total …” Dykes said Friday as he rubbed his nose, shook his head and let out a long exhale, “disaster of a football game.”

Since getting humbled by Georgia 65-7 in the 2022 title game, the Horned Frogs are 8-10: 5-7 last year and 3-3 so far this season. Those eight wins came against six Football Bowl Subdivision teams with a combined record of 26-33 and two FCS squads. Only one of the TCU’s 2023 victories came against a team that finished with a winning record (SMU), and none of its FBS wins this year are over teams currently above .500.

Any honeymoon period that Dykes enjoyed after his magical first season is completely over as far as TCU fans are concerned. The Horned Frogs’ slide in the last 18 games has resulted in Dykes burning through virtually all of the positive vibes built up from 2022.

TCU’s trends are troubling. Since the start of the 2023 season, the Horned Frogs are minus-17 in turnover margin, which ranks 130th out of 134 FBS teams in that span. Only Louisiana Tech, Rice and Temple are worse.

The Frogs have averaged 57.3 penalty yards per game in their last 18 games, which ranks 59th out of 70 teams in the Power 4.

The biggest disappointment, a jarring one for those who have followed TCU’s rise through three conferences to college football’s adults table for the last 25 years, is how inconsistent the Horned Frogs are defensively.

• Since the start of 2023, TCU has allowed 32.1 points per game to FBS opponents, which ranks 111th nationally.
• The 43.1 percent third-down conversion rate TCU allowed to FBS opponents in that span is 112th.
• The defense’s 407.8 yards per game allowed to FBS foes since the start of 2023 is 92nd nationally.
• According to Pro Football Focus, the Horned Frogs have pressured opposing quarterbacks 27.9 percent of the time in the last 16 games against FBS competition, which ranks 110th.

Under former coach Gary Patterson, the Horned Frogs built their identity on elite defense. Dykes fired his initial defensive coordinator Joe Gillespie  and hired former Boise State coach Andy Avalos last offseason. Now it’s unclear what type of performance that unit will offer on a given week.

On Friday night against the Cougars, TCU committed four turnovers, which contributed to 10 Houston points. But the Horned Frogs yielded 208 rushing yards and had trouble corralling Houston quarterback Zeon Chriss, making his first start for the Cougars. In the losses to UCF and SMU, the Horned Frogs gave up 289 and 238 rushing yards, respectively.

Offensively, TCU has been unable to consistently get its run game going, which was a key part of 2022’s success. The Horned Frogs rushed for just 66 yards on Friday night, 65 against SMU and 58 against UCF, despite coordinator Kendal Briles’ history of productive rushing attacks.

Beyond the on-field failings, fans have grown frustrated with the lack of answers for the issues. After the SMU debacle two weeks ago, Dykes told reporters he was “surprised” with what transpired because his team practiced well heading into the game. On Friday, he said “I’m not quite sure exactly why” TCU has played the way it has, again expressing frustration in his team’s inability to play under the lights the way it did in practice.

After Friday’s loss, Dykes said he thought the Cougars were the “more excited” team of the two.

“They played harder than we did, certainly, in the first half,” Dykes told reporters. “They were better prepared than we were and they kicked our tail.”

Give new Houston coach Willie Fritz and his team credit. The Cougars were energized, played fast and looked like the better of the two teams, despite coming into the game last in the Big 12 standings.

“Some of the stuff that happened tonight is just inexcusable,” Dykes said. “It falls on me. Obviously, I did a poor job of getting our guys ready to play.”

Dykes must endure the sprouting narrative that his greatest TCU success came thanks to players largely recruited by his predecessor, Patterson. Some may even wish for the good old days of GP, conveniently forgetting how mediocre the team had become before the program legend was ushered out: TCU went 21-22 overall and 13-19 in Big 12 play in Patterson’s final three-plus years in charge.

It is true that Dykes succeeded with a core — one that included quarterback Max Duggan, running back Kendre Miller, receiver Quentin Johnston, linebacker Dee Winters, cornerback Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson, among many others — that was largely brought in by Patterson. But Patterson got middling results with that roster, which is why he ended up out of a job.

Dykes, who revived SMU before taking the TCU job, pushed all the right buttons in his first season in Fort Worth. The fresh voice and new direction unlocked the program’s potential and showed how far the Horned Frogs could go.

But the wrong buttons have been pushed too many times since. Despite the solid talent on the roster, the results are lacking. Something is broken at TCU.

“I’m at a loss for words,” Dykes said Friday night. “I don’t really have an answer for why we played the way we did.”

Can Dykes fix it? The fact that the question must be asked less than two years after one of the best seasons in program history is shocking.

TCU is off next week before traveling to Utah on Oct. 19. There’s a little bit of time for the Horned Frogs to lick their wounds, but righting this ship, based on their recent trajectory, doesn’t appear to be an easy fix.

“I’m disappointed for our fans,” Dykes said. “They deserve better than this. We’ve got two weeks to figure this out.”

(Photo: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)