Dating back to the end of last season, the TCU defense is having a rough go of it.
In two College Football Playoff games, the Horned Frogs surrendered 110 points, including 65 in a 65-7 loss to Georgia in the national championship game.
In Week 1 last weekend, TCU coughed up 45 points to Deion Sanders’ Colorado outfit in a 45-42 season-opening loss, a performance that caused TCU linebacker Johnny Hodges to deem the unit the “laughingstock” of the sport.
“I guess you can say it’s a wake-up call,” Hodges said, via ESPN. “I don’t know how losing in the national championship by 60 isn’t a wake-up call. Right now we’re definitely the laughingstock of college football. Having 22 missed tackles, having who knows how many missed assignments, making our defensive coordinator look awful, just making his defense look like it’s a childhood kids’ defense and him getting all this slack … So if it’s not a wake-up call, then I don’t know what it is.”
This weekend, the Horned Frogs take on FCS Nicholls in what should be a game they will win without much trouble.
Their next test against an FBS opponent will be at Houston on Sept. 16.
“I think some games you play in where you look back at the game and you go, ‘There’s not much we could’ve done,'” TCU head coach Sonny Dykes said this week about his team’s opening loss. “That’s really not the case in this game. There’s a ton of mistakes and a ton of things to learn from. That’s the goal. I think our guys were disappointed and frustrated and pissed off, honestly.”