Despite sloppy play, Sonny Dykes sees bright spots in TCU football’s season-opening win

After having a few days to digest the game film, TCU coach Sonny Dykes said he was more encouraged by how the Horned Frogs played in their 34-27 win over Stanford in Week 1.

It was far from clean, but if you looked across the college football landscape over the last two weeks then you would’ve seen a lot of similar performances, even from some teams expected to contend for a playoff spot.

Dykes said it was the type of performance the Horned Frogs can build off of heading into Saturday’s home opener against Long Island.

“I think we realized we made some mistakes Friday night that we can correct,” Dykes said on Tuesday. “I think the guys are anxious to get back out there and perform better, but I was encouraged watching the film about a lot of the things that we did against Stanford. We’ve made some big strides from where we were last year. I loved the way our guys competed with our backs against the wall.”

There’s a case to be made that last year’s Horned Frogs may not have been able to find a way to overcome the mountain of mistakes TCU committed against Stanford.

While 100 penalty yards and losing the turnover battle is enough to steer most teams to a defeat, Dykes believes the group is already showing signs it’s more resilient than a season ago.

“We could’ve pulled away from them several times, but we didn’t,” Dykes said. “We were fortunate to win, but I thought we played pretty solid football on both sides of the ball against an improved football team. I think Stanford is much improved over where they were last year.”

Being able to overcome adversity, even if self-inflicted, is a quality every good team has. In games against Colorado and West Virginia last season, the Horned Frogs folded in the face of adversity they created for themselves.

Toughness isn’t just about how hard you hit or block, it’s about being able to endure the ebbs and flows of a game. Linebacker Marcel Brooks, who had 1.5 sacks against Stanford, didn’t want to focus on last year’s mentality, but instead he wanted to highlight this team’s approach to adversity.

“I know this team is going to do a lot of things to get us out of adversity,” Brooks said. “I know this team that we have this year is ready for adversity and we’re all about pulling out with the win. I’m pretty sure our leadership, they’re ready to win every game. We’re not really worried about last year, we’re more worried about this year and overcoming any adversity that happens this year.”

While being able to endure adversity is important, being able to avoid it all together is another sign of a good team. While Dykes said he could live with some of the mistakes the Horned Frogs committed against Stanford, there are others that have already been addressed during this week’s practice.

“We had a number of personal foul penalties, some of them quite frankly I had a little bit of a problem with,” Dykes said. “I thought the game was officiated very soft.... but there were some things that we did wrong that we have to improve on. The thing I liked is we had no pre-snap penalties. No false starts, no offsides.

“The stuff that we had was us trying to be physical, us trying to finish plays. There were one or two things that were a lack of discipline that we have to get fixed and that’s been the big focus this week.”

While TCU focuses on cleaning up its miscues, the Horned Frogs aren’t overlooking a LIU team that had a similar outing Albany like TCU did against Stanford.

“I’ve been impressed with Long Island and what I’ve seen from their team,” Dykes said. “They’ve got a good quarterback that can make plays. The running back had 128 yards against Albany, he’s a good player. I like their defensive front, there’s some guys inside that can be a problem.

“A good football team, hey took Albany, who is their conference champion, to the brink last week. It was really a similar game to what we had against Stanford, they dominated the game in terms of yardage, but they just made some mistakes that kept them from beating a really good football team. Our guys will have to play really well.”

A clean game by TCU should guarantee a stress-free Saturday for the Horned Frogs, but FCS opponents are always dangerous. Oregon and Colorado were challenged by Idaho and North Dakota State while New Mexico was upset by Montana State in Week 0.

As long as TCU doesn’t overlook the Sharks and eliminate some of the mistakes like fumbles and personal foul penalties, then Saturday should be a nice tune-up before the start of Big 12 play.