CryptoMiner
Active Member
TCU defense currently #55, finished #100 last season.
Finishing strong and team growth
- Thread starter CryptoMiner
- Start date
The Bad Guy
Active Member
To be fair the defense has been improving throughout the season. It's a totally new system and I think Avalos had to find the right pieces to make it work. I expect the defense to be much improved next season with his recruits.
Frogfam4
Active Member
They have gotten better. I like the way things are going
Limey Frog
Full Member
We might have been fifty-fifth before playing Oklahoma last year and dropped forty-five spots in one game. That's what it felt like.
CryptoMiner
Active Member
agree, this yr. was our soft Big 12 schedule. Lucky to get 6-7 wins next year.
Frogfam4
Active Member
Now the schedule looks soft, but did we think that when OSU, Utah, Kansas were on there. I think Arizona was picked high in the conference. These teams all turned out to be bad this season. Teams the frogs beat. Pre season rankings don’t mean any thing. So what for next year. I believe the frogs will be way improved and will be a contender for the Big 12.
Limey Frog
Full Member
I think so, too. Strength on the lines looks like it can only improve, and we will have an upperclassman QB. That said, I think consensus on our schedule coming into this year was "tough but manageable" based on expectations that SMU, Utah, Arizona, and Oklahoma State would be good. But we knew we that one of those teams was changing head coach and two of the others relied heavily on injury-prone QBs not getting hurt.
Next year we get K-State, Colorado, and Arizona State, and of those only the Buffs are a home game. Avery Johnson will be a junior and K-State under Kleiman will always be tough. I know they lose Sanders and Hunter, but anyone who doesn't believe in Coach Prime at this point just doesn't want to; Colorado aren't unbeatable but they will be tough. And ASU's Dillingham is a rising star--they will be a contender. I don't see us getting lucky with misalignment of pre-season bets and our actual schedule two years in a row. We'll be better, but the path will be harder.
Hopefully Lashlee will bail on Dallas and we'll get a nice bonus in the form of SMU falling back into oblivion.
Prince of Purpoole II
Reigning Smartarse
Not a bad sales pitch
I think the preseason top 5 was (in no particular order)
Utah
Az
Kansas
OSU
K State
This did not look like an easy schedule in September.
Frog Attack II
Active Member
And one of the leaders this year (BYU) was horrible last year.... Same thing with ASU... Stop worrying about the schedule or using it as a crutch, people!!!!
In this NIL world, every year is a new year and you really don't know what you will get... Has no bearing on 2025 performance.
Do y'all think Texas fans are worried about their schedule this year being softer than OU's and what will next year be like? I can answer that for you.... No!
Enjoy an improving team!
In this NIL world, every year is a new year and you really don't know what you will get... Has no bearing on 2025 performance.
Do y'all think Texas fans are worried about their schedule this year being softer than OU's and what will next year be like? I can answer that for you.... No!
Enjoy an improving team!
What you will get, and what you will have. I bet our projected 2025 roster right now will look quite a bit different in August.
If K-State, ISU, AZ State and CU are automatic losses, then it's time to turn ACS into a lacrosse field. The 2025 Big 12 will look a lot this year's version: a bunch of good teams fighting it out. There is no dominant team this year and there won't be one next year.
There is so much K-State love on here that I wonder if we should open a new campus in Manhattan. They lost to Houston (just like an "overrated" TCU team) and should have lost to KU. How is a TCU road win over KU soft but a KSU home win over the Jayhawks strong? KU should have beaten them but Daniels gifted them a win with a terrible fumble late in that game. KSU's best wins are Tulane, CU and KU. Good grief.
I do think that ISU and ASU will be good again, but they are not unbeatable. Both teams enjoyed a 2022 TCU season: they have won every close game. And CU will regress if Coach Prime stays or leaves. If he does leave, then most of their skilled players will transfer out. If he stays, then their QB will be a true frosh. And Hunter is gone for sure: they'll miss his play on both sides of the ball.
Every Frog fan crying out about our soft schedule is using that as a crutch to chip away at Sonny's bounce back this year. We've suffered through some dark moments this year, but I love how how we have fought back. Now, let's finish strong, enjoy a good offseason of recruiting and push forward next year. Personally, I can't wait to play those "strong" teams next year in the Big 12. It is sure more fun than pounding CSU, UNLV, New Mexico and Wyoming every year.
There is so much K-State love on here that I wonder if we should open a new campus in Manhattan. They lost to Houston (just like an "overrated" TCU team) and should have lost to KU. How is a TCU road win over KU soft but a KSU home win over the Jayhawks strong? KU should have beaten them but Daniels gifted them a win with a terrible fumble late in that game. KSU's best wins are Tulane, CU and KU. Good grief.
I do think that ISU and ASU will be good again, but they are not unbeatable. Both teams enjoyed a 2022 TCU season: they have won every close game. And CU will regress if Coach Prime stays or leaves. If he does leave, then most of their skilled players will transfer out. If he stays, then their QB will be a true frosh. And Hunter is gone for sure: they'll miss his play on both sides of the ball.
Every Frog fan crying out about our soft schedule is using that as a crutch to chip away at Sonny's bounce back this year. We've suffered through some dark moments this year, but I love how how we have fought back. Now, let's finish strong, enjoy a good offseason of recruiting and push forward next year. Personally, I can't wait to play those "strong" teams next year in the Big 12. It is sure more fun than pounding CSU, UNLV, New Mexico and Wyoming every year.
Now that's an excellent post. All good points.
People expect us to win 10+ games every year. Hasn't ever happened, and not gonna happen. All in all this has been a decent year (a win over Cincy would cement that) and the prospects for next year are about as good as anyone else in the league, as it stands now. Enjoy it.
Limey Frog
Full Member
This is all fine. I didn't say anything about automatic losses, I said they would be tough. About mid-season Sonny looked to have put a hapless outfit that couldn't get out of it's own way onto the field and a 4-8 finish felt depressingly possible. Now we're looking at 8-4 instead. I complained as hard as anyone that TCU looked poorly coached and while we clearly need improved depth on the lines, we weren't obviously getting the best out of talent we have now, which is a coaching issue. Mid-season course corrections aren't overly common in college football; you're usually the team by December that you looked in early October. That hasn't proved the case this year and Sonny & Co. deserve a lot of credit. They've started to prove me wrong already, thank goodness. Let's see next year if we can get a team coming out of fall camp looking like they're ready to play in September. If so, the schedule in this conference will never be insurmountable. It will always, as you say, consist of some good-but-getable teams, and some pretty poor ones. But by the same measure, no one is ever likely to see TCU on their schedule and pencil in a loss automatically.
I'm not trying to discredit Sonny. It is a simple fact that if you look at the standings, five of the six teams we avoided are ahead of us, and the one we played and barely lost to is tied with us for overall record (as is the other team we avoided). Eight of the nine spots below us are occupied by teams on our schedule, and we've already lost to two of them.
TCU has had a remarkable mid-season turnaround for which Sonny's staff deserves credit. Our schedule turned out to be among the weakest possible in this league, and overall (because the first half does also count) our performance against it was far from unimpeachable. Both of these can be true at the same time.
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Maybe if those teams had to have played TCU they would have been the bottom dwellers?????
Limey Frog
Full Member
Houston managed to beat us and still be one, so then again, maybe not.
This Ain't Chopped Liver
Active Member
For comparison, I think if you normalize the Frogs 2023 and 2024 schedules to the Big XII round-robin schedules of 2012-2022, then the Frogs more likely 3-9 or 4-8 in 2023 and 6-6 in 2024 rather than 5-7 in 2023 and 8-4 (assuming a Cincy win) in 2024.
This season the Frogs only played two conference teams with winning records, Baylor and Texas Tech, and 7 conference teams with losing records. Last year, TCU played lowly Houston and BYU (both 2-7) to chalk up two of its 5 wins instead of having to play 7-2 Oklahoma State and 5-4 Kansas.
So, a two or three-game improvement from 3 or 4 wins to 6 wins.
This season the Frogs only played two conference teams with winning records, Baylor and Texas Tech, and 7 conference teams with losing records. Last year, TCU played lowly Houston and BYU (both 2-7) to chalk up two of its 5 wins instead of having to play 7-2 Oklahoma State and 5-4 Kansas.
So, a two or three-game improvement from 3 or 4 wins to 6 wins.
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There isn’t much difference between the 1st place and the 12th place B12 teams. BYU is T1st right now. They might be underdogs against half the league teams right now.
You have to ignore the scheduling discrepancies between teams way more in this league than you do in basically every other league.
An-Cap Frog
Member
To support your assertion, using the composite 247 ratings average for the 2024 class the bottom of the class was BYU at 85.87 and the highest was Tech at 88.27. Texas and OU typically averaged recruits in the 90's, so talent wise there is less of a gap from team to team in the Big XII.
The Big XII is basically the Big Ten without OSU, Oregon, Michigan, Penn State, Northwestern, and Purdue.
