TCU holds on against Stanford in season opener. Sonny Dykes team is 1-0

the TCU horn frogs are one and0 it was not the easy way to do it it wasn't it was very stressful it was frustrating at times we don't apologize for wins on lockon horn frogs we are going to get into the positives and the negatives from tonight it's lockdown horn frogs live postgame show at your team every day you are locked on horn frogs your daily podcast on the TCU horn frogs part of the locked on podcast Network your team every day that's right locked on horn frogs your team every day I'm your host Stephen Simcox it is 1:20 in the morning in the central time zone um not sure if you're on the East Coast or West Coast or whatever but it's late at night wherever you're living and TCU is one and0 they survived and beat Stanford 34 to 27 sorry for anybody who bet the uh bet the frogs to cover looked like they were going to cam cook had a late touchdown to push that lead to 10 and was like oh wow even with all this sloppy play they're going to end up winning and covering and then St forget the late field goal to get it done I'm going to be positive in segment one and if you want to chime in on the chat you can live on YouTube um I'll try to get to some of those throughout the show you can also tweet at me at some Stephen if you've never done if you've never seen this before this is what we do on lockdown hor frog we do live postgame shows right after the ball game it's irrational it's emotional and yeah it's just hey this is our reactions to the game right so so I'm going to stay positive in segment one and then in segment two I want to talk about a lot of the frustrating aspects of this game and one concern one really concerning overarching Trend that's happening with sunny dyk's football team here at TCU that if it doesn't get fixed then yes we're looking at another long season I'm seeing some of you chime in Conor says man that was ugly can't play like that in League Play sure David May says uh Bron played great at corner we'll have another Thorp winter if he keeps playing like that I want to get to all those things so let's start with the positives okay Andy aalos defense tonight They Carried this team through the first three quarters of this ball game like I would not have put that on my bingo card going into the game if my prediction was 352 24 I guess it didn't end up being that far from what ended up happening I thought it'd be a more comfortable win than how it played out tonight but they had consistent pressure how about Marcel Brooks man my goodness um I think he had three sacks on the night like I thought Marcel was going to be more of a situational pass rusher and he fits into that role in a fantastic way Cooper McDonald saw him pop at times he made some big plays um Devon deal with some tackles behind the line of scrimmage Abe Kamar had some great tackles behind the line of scrimmage whether it was bringing blitzers or you know the dline and Edge rushers themselves um they got to Ashton Daniels on a consistent basis now Stanford's o line is not very good they returning pretty much every from last year they really struggled protecting the quarterback last year but still they did a fantastic job getting pressure and yeah the corners like I came into this ball game thinking that I was really concerned about the corner position because we heard through fall camp that TCU wanted to allow their Corners to play more in an island a lot a lot more press man coverage where they were going to be in one-on-one situations and they had to win and ellic aor uh is an NFL type of wide receiver and he ended up with a pretty good stat line like if you just look at the box score I think he had seven catches for 102 yards but if you watch that ball game which I know a lot of you did you know that JT Bron the um transfer from Utah did an outstanding job against aom Manar like he had this he was doing the seat belt celebration like he had him locked up for a lot of the ball game he had a a had a really good drive towards the end of the game that actually gave Stanford the lead But ultimately like on both sides lamary and James had some pbus um they got play after play in the fourth quarter and in big situations to get off the field uh so that was a big deal John Martin says that quarterback was awful you know honestly like yeah I don't think Ashton Daniels is fantastic but I I feel like he kept him in the game with his legs and his passing line was not great but I I see your point um bottom line is I thought the TCU secondary held up a lot better than I personally expected uh T and Mitchell with an interception that was cool I mean it was a weird play right ball goes off Johnny hodges's back and he's just there at the right time but they did force a turnover opportunistic that's awesome I mean really that entire third quarter like you kept waiting for the offense to get into gear and they got great field position at times it's like all right this is the chance for the offense to really get going um and they couldn't do it but the defense kept coming up with big stops and I think that's a a great thing for TCU and their prospects moving forward that you know it's Stanford right but in a game where you're adjusting a new scheme and doing a lot of things on the Fly and going up against an offense with some Playmakers um you held up really well honestly like the JP Richards and fumble that was one touchdown the first drive of the game goodness gracious man they like this is not really an exaggeration they basically let Stanford March down the field just via penalties and that's got to get cleaned up and I'm going to get more into that um later Jacob sailor says the quarterback pressure was so noticeable it was like it was night and day even if they weren't getting to Daniels and there were sometimes where they overp pursued and he broke contained and made some plays that's got to get cleaned up too but it was just there all night long like they were either disrupting the timing of the routes disrupting the throwing angles or getting the quarterback and that's a great thing also the rushing attack like yes you have to figure out a way to keep quarterbacks from running all over you like Ashton Daniels and p7 seven yards on the ground but when Stanford tried to line up and run the football like in a traditional manner they couldn't do it Cedric Irvin had five carries for 24 yards uh Micah Ford 10 carries for 20 yards two yards per carry Justin Lamson had a touchdown and he was their Wildcat quarterback but when they tried to just run up like run the ball in the standard way against that front six or front seven that TCU put out there um the frogs held up really well so I was super impressed with and these defense overall positives on the offensive side I thought Josh Hoover overall had a really good game you know a stat line 28 of 42 353 yards about nine yards per completion and two touchdowns um I don't know where Eric mallister and dalen Wright were tonight they weren't on the field a whole lot so I'll look maybe here in a minute if have a chance at Sunny's postgame comments and see if he says anything about it but that was weird to me like you heard all about those guys in Fall camp and I know there's always kind of a bait and switch with that stuff when the game actually starts but that was that was very odd that they didn't get on the field um but from a receiving standpoint hello Jack bash you know that's a guy that we've heard about a lot and sometimes like you can get into this sometimes you have like practice Allstars and what I mean by that is guys that like you hear about them all offseason hey this guy's really playing well for us we like what he brings to the table and then the game actually starts the game start he doesn't get the that many opportunities but to Sunny's credit like he said I think Jamie flunet brought this up during the game he was like man Sunny Dyk said that Jack bash was their offensive MVP during spring practice and he showed up in a huge way like let me get the stats up here and switching tabs sorry for some of the delays six catches for 139 yards and a touchdown um had basically the game-winning touchdown in the corner of the end zone made some huge plays over the middle and it was really all from the slot I was very curious to see where they were going to line him up um maybe like an HB or kind of more of a tight end roll no he was doing a lot of that work from the slot receiver position which um was intriguing to me and I think that was cool you know Savon had some drops tonight there was a stretch in the second half where he kind of got in his own head and that was frustrating um but I liked when they motioned him into the back field or gu into that quarterback spot they were in that play in the Red Zone where he came in at QB he faked the reverse to Josh and got around the edge for five or six yards I would love to see him in more situations like that just because I think he's so big and physical that he's going to get positive yardage and that first drive I mean he really dominated had the touchdown catch had a couple other catches on that drive so that was nice to see uh cam cook it was an up and down game somebody earlier I'm kind of getting lost in the YouTube comments sorry um David May said Hoover only had two or three bad throws yeah that's where I'm at now they didn't stretch the field a whole lot tonight right it was it was very much within 10 to 15 yards at most but to his credit he made good decisions he didn't make risky throws and um you know guys were running open and he he got he got him the ball which is what you want him to do this offense is supposed to be pretty quarterback friendly so I think they want that to be the key um cam cook in the second half was really good 12 carries for 59 yards in the second half had that touchdown to seal the ball game so that was good to see about how earlier he had a fumble um and I'll get to that more in segment two had the fumble in the red zone right before halftime which was a killer and it looked like Josh was very demonstrative like probably the most demonstrative I've seen Josh Hoover since he got the job which I think was good because it felt like that was a quarterback taking ownership of his team and he was trying to show cam like the way that he was supposed to either take that hand off or that fake he didn't expect him to move a certain way and that caused a fumble and somebody also said like why why are they hurrying up in that situation I don't know they're just always going to do that I don't like it either I don't love the you know get 30 yards and then Sprint up to the line I get I think in a lot of cases you just throw your own offense into whack and it doesn't um create good plays but they did that there they end up fumbling the football and because of that they Trail it halftime 17 to10 when they had a chance to tie it up after a great throw to Jack Bash offensive line wise I think they did a good job in pass protection um I don't have the number of sacks that Stanford got in front of me but I overall like it felt like it was pretty clean pocket now a bunch of rpos a lot of getting the ball out quickly but that's part of this offense um the running game was a struggle and it still feels like they can't really run unless there's a light box or there's some sort of misdirection they had some success with that kind of counter draw play tonight where it's like all right we're acting like we're passing the ball we're move we're all moving this way and then cam cook comes the other way and gets it done um but it just again interior o line running Straight Ahead that was that was a problem and that being a problem against Stanford not super encouraging but it is week one so we'll see if they can cook up some things to uh get better on that front Okay positive wise I'm trying to think of anything else that I had I talked about the corners I talked about the pass rush I mean overall just really loved the the intensity and effort from the defense tonight was noticeably different like they were bringing now it sometimes it was Reckless and it caused penalties uh Joe says Stanford had two sacks tonight thank you I appreciate that um so overall they did a pretty good job of keeping Josh clean the effort on defense was great and they were physical they were tackling um not a ton of Miss tackles tonight like I I felt like that was a lot better now you got to clean up some of these penalties and you can't let teams March down the field on you like a lot of the penalties were guys being aggressive and so I can live with it but it the details have to get honed in I mean overall though man like I I don't really think you could ask for a better debut for that defense given you know some of the bad situations they were put in and the fact that they're installing a new scheme and everything that comes with that okay we got the positives in I want to take a quick break here and then we're going to discuss my biggest frustration tonight which was just the the mental mistakes the penalties all that's coming up here in a moment here on lockdown hor frogs it's a live postgame show your team every day I'll quickly tell you about our friends at 5our energy go to 5our energy.com you can use the promo code lockon cfp to receive 20% off your order you can order 12 packs or 24 packs online they have all kinds of flavors you can build your own do it today 5 Hour Energy not just in convenience stores now it's also online who knew all right so a win is a win okay one and0 is one and0 we'll take it all the cliches right earlier I saw Jacob sailor say in the chat and I'm seeing a lot of you say Big Easy says too many penalties but Jacob said if they play a clean game then they win probably like 44 to7 my My Pal Matt jinnings freelance Rider um he tweeted in the third quarter during that stretch where like TCU had the chance to take the lead but couldn't do it TCU was almost doubling up Stanford on a yards per playay basis if they could just be marginally better in high leverage situations or avoid them entirely they'd be running away so another positive from tonight now it's Stanford it's on the road it wasn't like a rock his environment but the offense when they had to have a huge Drive they did it that's Josh Hoover's first like game-winning Drive in his college career the two games that he won last year he won by 38 points and 27 points he played well in those ball games but in a couple of the one- score games where he had opportunities to get the team back that wasn't something that him or the offense did well last year and they did it tonight like big plays throw over the middle Jack bash and another throw over the middle on RPO JP Richardson he gets down the field um hits Jack bash in the corner of the end zone for a touchdown it was quick it was efficient they got it done and they were efficient in the Red Zone in that scenario which is awesome so that's a huge key my bone to pick tonight is with sunny and yeah I I have issues with the play calling I think in the Red Zone it's too cute I also feel like that's still sort of an offensive line problem but at some point it's got to get fixed it's got to get better but for sunny dkes if your whole thing so every coach excels at something right like every coach has something that they hang their hat on that they're gonna make the identity of their program for Gary Patterson for years it was he was a defensive play caller he ran a very Innovative defense and he was the head coach on that side of the ball and then his grit and toughness permeated throughout the rest of the team and so they had at their Peak they had great mental toughness they were physical they got after it they played good complimentary football but defense was what ran the show okay sunny early in his career my view of him was air raid tree guy Innovative offensive mind and he had that side of the ball down um now it seems like he is transitioned to a place where he is CEO Vibes guy culture guy so he's gonna hire talented people he's going to empower them to do their jobs he's going to let the players kind of be themselves and hope that you know they lead really well like he has good player leadership and that that kind of goes through the team and he's a laid-back dude by Nature that's all fine there's a lot of ways to do this job there's there's a lot of different types of people that are successful and I'm sure I can think of more like one sort of CEO coach that is out there right now is Dion at Colorado but Dion at Colorado when he goes into somebody's living room a five-star player he holds a lot of cache right he brings in a ton of talent he brings in guys like shador Sanders and Travis Hunter so if Sunny's whole thing is going to be like I'm CEO guy I kind of keep my hands off a lot of the nuts and bolts and play calling and strategy and I'm like game management culture if that's going to be your thing you cannot have 100 plus yards in penalties okay it just can't happen and I would love for tonight to just be like well we can ride it off because it's week one and things are wacky and weird and it's sloppy at times I would love to say that but there were too many games last year where this was this was the case whether it was penalties or what we saw tonight Dro passes mental mistakes that just led to to bad moments like a huge swing in that ball game and I hate to pick on individual people but you know JP Richardson drops that pass from the TV angle it looked like if he caught it he had a blocker out in front he would have got a first down then Kyle liberman missed a field goal and and suddenly yeah Stanford goes down and scores a touchdown think at worst you'll have a six-point lead but instead you end up trailing by four points now it ended up being a mute point because TCU drove down and scored which was great but all those detail things that they did so well two years ago they failed at it last year a huge part of you know this off season at least from what they were saying was that they were going to get better at it this year it did not show it did not show up in game one but to their credit when they had to have a big Stones drive at the end of the ball game they got it done right and that does mean something you know like survive in advance does mean something to a certain extent but I'm just I'm Blown Away by the lack of discipline and somebody said oh Jonathan said the defense look like they were playing too fast in that first drive yeah that's probably a good way to describe it I mean you know I get it it's a lot of those penalties were aggression based which I like because it means the defense is playing with a lot of fire and energy and enthusiasm but let me pull up the play byplay here because I this is not hyperbole like the the entire dra with penalties I know you guys know this because you're watching it you know third and 13 at the eight yard line pass interference extends the drift third and 18 to the TCU 46 Ashton Daniels gets sacked but face maskk penalty gets him another first down on third 19 Ashton Daniels runs for 31 yards now a huge thing that was super positive is in the second half like defense really struggle on third and fourth down in the first half second half that improved um which is awesome and again like big drive by the offense to go down and score and then the defense um lateen that ball game Stanford's trailing by three and they got a chance to go win the game or tie it and they they gave up negative six yards like they made back-to-back plays to force third and 10 got a sack to Force fourth and 16 got another incompletion to get the ball back to the offense that's huge man that's big situational football that's awesome I have no idea what that play call was on first and goal where they threw the ball I was I was upset it looked like an RPO so I guess I'll give the coaching staff maybe the benefit of the doubt and that I think Josh probably made that read but I I don't know why you're running any sort of situation where you're you're throwing the ball there and Andy Swain reach outs me on Twitter was like well I like I like the idea of taking a Kill Shot okay here's my thing I think as a coach you have to understand every like every week and every game is kind of its own thing so the way that game was playing out your defense was carrying you for the most part so I think you run the ball three times you and it they ended up scoring so it doesn't matter but I think you run the ball three times you force Stanford to use all their timeouts and you give them the ball back with 80 at worse you give the ball back with like a minute 20 on the clock and um Kick the field goal and and you force them to go score a touchdown with no timeouts and a little over a minute to go right so I I don't know what that what that was about but I was pretty dumbfounded by that play call in that situation however they got a victory and you know there were plenty of games last year where in situations like that they would have folded and they wouldn't have come up with big drives like that or big plays when they had to have it so I will take that as a positive now you transition to basically your controlled scrimmage against Long Island and you take care of business there you get UCF in a couple weeks you got a lot to clean up between now and then but you have some time to do it and I'm I'm really salivating it the idea of I don't know what his timetable is but if Paula laal is healthy and can be effective as a pass rusher with his hand on the ground along with those guys that stud linebacker that were fantastic tonight hey man let's go let's get it going Red Zone efficiency offensive efficiency it has to be better but so much of it to me comes back to the fact that you have to run the ball like you have to run the ball in situations where people expect you to run the ball okay it's cool to catch people off guard and run against light box all that stuff when it comes down to it everybody in the building knows you're running it you have to still be successful in those scenarios we'll take one more quick break here come back and finish things up it's locked on horn frog your team every day all right eBay Motors if you need a part for your car whether you're trying to keep it just running or you're trying to level it up to Peak Performance millions of parts for your MVP go to their website and they have the eBay guaranteed fit program where you put the make and Mel of your vehicle in you find the part you need you put it in the shopping cart and it will tell you yes or no this is right for your car eBay Motors Millions the parts for your MVP win every time with parts that fit your ride that eBay guaranteed fit program is only available to us customers yeah some people have been commenting on it and asking me about it um hos Haney played tonight which was interesting you know I I said this offseason I was like I I think he needs to get in there and be someone who they can use in certain situations and at least have a package of plays for him and then talking to some people who were close to the team including Jamie plunet who came on our show a couple weeks ago he said yeah cautious you know adjust your expectations I think they're definitely going to try to keep his red shirt open but he was I mean he came in the game tonight he handed off the ball he had an eight- yard run and then he unfortunately suffered a leg injury don't know the extent of it but I did see a tweet that he was hobbling around a little bit on the sideline so that stinks man because I think the fact that he was playing in your season opener and sure maybe it was just like hey we got to do something to uh to Kickstart this offense but that game was in the balance I just think if if their playing was really red shirting that was that was a very strange time to put him in the ball game um but maybe it was maybe that was just like hey we want to get him some opportunities you know in four games and this was one where they could do it um yeah I was super impressed with again I don't know what the deal was with uh with dalen Wright and Eric mcau tonight but I think when the passing game like when when the receivers weren't dropping passes um they really did what they wanted through the air and Stanford's defense was bad last year but it still was good to see that things for the most part looked like they were in Rhythm it's just a matter of cleaning up some of those things and getting better on off As you move forward a lot of you are commenting I appreciate you joining me tonight we're going to wrap things up here we'll have more shows I'll have a show on Monday on Labor Day and we'll get ready for uh Long Island moving forward TCU is one and0 if you miss some of this you can rewatch it here in a minute frogs are want to know um okay Ben says sunny says dalen and JoJo were banged up at the end of Camp that's why B got the start in the outside okay that's good information to know so injuries there plenty difference Well Jack B might have got himself a spot because he was their best receiver tonight it wasn't really close so that was cool to see um we'll be back on Monday thank you for rocking with us on the post game you know TC you after dark I appreciate it so lockdown horn frogs it's short team we do it here every single day we're free and available wherever is you get your podcast