TCU starting quarterback is fully healthy and ready to rock and roll for 2024 we'll talk about what that means next here on lockdown horn frogs it's your team we do it here 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 lock on horn frogs your team every day subscribe to the YouTube channel you can also find us wherever as you listen to your podcast we're free and available wherever podcasts are listened to consumed I'm Stephen SX your host Josh Uber is fully healthy and ready to rock and roll for this upcoming season we got confirmation about that today there's been some speculation about it this year he miss spring camp with an undisclosed injury but was said that he had to have surgery and didn't get reps during spring camp Ken seal stepped in and did a nice job the transfer from Vandy hos Haney the true freshman all Al on campus he enrolled early so he went through practices during spring camp Josh Hoover wasn't available but he was at Big 12 media days today which kicked off in Las Vegas and TCU was first up in the proceedings Sunny dyes did a press conference he talked with the folks at ESPNU we talked with friends at 365 Sports they did breakout sessions there were other players available but the question everybody wanted answered and Jamie plunket from 247 Sports I don't know if he was I doubt he was the only one that asked it but I saw on Twitter that he had a video standing there with Josh and he said how do you feel what are where are you at he said I'm fully ready to go he said I'm a full go and he said multiple times during the proceedings today that he's as healthy as he's ever been or his body feels about as good as it's felt in a long time so that's good news and I think the other revealing thing about today which is not surprising because as I said before media day started there's really no reason to trot your QB out there if you're uncertain about his status whether that's his health status or where he stands on the depth chart and Sunny Dykes when he was asked again by Jimmy Plunkett is Josh Hoover your guy like is he qb1 he said yeah for now which I feel like it's about as Rock Solid of an answer as you're G to get at this point in time if you have concerns about Sunny Dy choosing quarterbacks and going through a quarterback battle I think those concerns are valid his first season Chandler Mo's won the job Max Dugen comes in after Chandler goes down with an injury to Colorado and the rest is history this past year Josh Hoover wasn't really even a a factor honestly gosh I'm forgetting the name of the Oregon State transfer now I believe it was chance Nolan who came in from Oregan State and had a nice little career there there was some murmurs that okay maybe he's the guy but after a couple practices he decides he wants to leave the team doesn't want to mess with football so Chandler was just kind of the deao player and honestly I remember last offseason going through doing shows and talking about man once chance left if if Morris goes down suddenly it feels like TC is kind of up a creek with their quarterback situation now they've said this offseason they feel much better about the QB this year just overall but I think they feel good about Josh as a starter and probably the most important thing now results on the field still matter and ultimately like it's not just about heart and about intangibles you have to have the physical gifts to throw the football make the plays to get things done but I don't have all the reasons why and last year I kind of stayed away from it I I don't know what was going on behind the scenes but I know this just watching that team week in and week out the body language the energy the effort it was much different and it was much better once Josh Hoover took over I I can't tell you why that is but and and that's not me hiding something I'm just saying like I don't know there was a noticeable difference when Josh was on the field I think the team rallied around him I think they responded to him and that's a big deal that he's got the locker room behind him right like that's a huge piece of the puzzle I also believe that this offseason the coaching staff has made a concerted effort from the end of that Oklahoma game and it's not all centering around the quarterback but I do believe that it's it's a big piece of this they're trying to build the team that works his strengths Sunny Dy said today when he sat down with the crew on ESPN plus it was Andre wear and Chris Buon and I'm blanking on the other guy that's at the table right now but he said you know what we don't want Josh throwing the ball 60 times a game this year and there were multiple games last season whether it was Oklahoma where they got in a shootout BYU game right when he comes in Off the Bench and just slinging the ball over the place and you could tell the o line was struggling the running game wasn't super efficient and Kendall BRS and the coaching staff just kind of decided you know what we're going to throw the ball around the yard we're going to use our quick passing game to sort of supplement what we would typically do in the Run game and that's not a great recipe for a success so they they revamp the offensive line they've got a new running back in cam cook even though I I don't say that to mean that deanii Bailey was a problem last year he was one of the few bright spots they've got some pieces on the o line now that they're hoping can coales and come together and make make things happen they overhauled the defense and they are making an effort to play more complimentary football this upcoming season so I think this is all good news competition is helpful I think there's still going to be somewhat of a composition in Camp I don't feel like Josh can just go out there and throw five interceptions every day and keep the job but it appears that they have a clear Direction and a Clear Vision in mind for this upcoming season and a lot of my optimism about the offense improving aside from switching up your personnel getting better getting healthier getting a more veteran presence up front and doing some better things in the Run game a big part of it as well was just simply the fact that Josh Hoover with another year under his belt and more game time experience will hopefully be a better quarterback and we be more comfortable in this system this upcoming season and I think you're seeing kind of the seeds be planted right now for the fact the staff believes that now will it all come to together I mean that's why they play the games but I think there's a Clear Vision and a clear plan in place which is which is great so Josh Uber's your guy he's fully healthy ready to go says he feels great and is ready to attack this season another thing that stood out to me in the comments that were made Jeremy Clark wrote a good article about this uh Andy avos new defense coordinator new scheme more aggressive kind of more feaser famine in some ways but one thing that Sunny pointed out was with the four defensive linemen now they're going from a 335 to this is kind of a hybrid 335 but you're going to see four or five guys down the line of scrimmage and in pass rushing situations and he said this is going to be really good for the defense he says the good thing about the four-man front is it's kind of counterintuitive to what you think defensive lineman and high quality defensive linemen are really difficult to recruit so you say well you're going from if you're on a three down front you only have to recruit three now you're in four down you have to recruit four but that's not entirely true when you're in a three down front you have to recruit these big three guys those guys are hard to find what changes now is you have a defense that's able to get speed on the field what I love about the four down system as you're playing with two traditional big defensive linemen a nose guard and a three technique but then you can play with a lot of different body types on the edge that can vary honestly from week to week with your opponent and uh with who's gonna get the LI share of the playing time so this is an interesting concept they're going to this four you know fourman front sometimes maybe fiveman front but Sunny's like listen with the Joe Gillespie defense you only had three defensive linemen but they had to be a very spe specific type of player and you had to go get guys that were big bodies that were going to be able to take up space that were going to be able to take double teams maintain Integrity in the line of scrimmage maintain Gap integrity and I mean those three dudes there was a ton of responsibility on them to make plays and to do a lot of things it's hard to get those types of guys in recruiting and like it or not in the Big 12 there's not a plethora of just great defensive line I don't when and if that's going to change but you know defense and offensive linemen are in short supply and in the nil world there's always going to be teams that spend a lot of money to try to land guys like that because it's just tough to find that type of god-given ability um and so now they're ping to more of this hybrid defense where there's a big emphasis on speed in athleticism so you've seen with this 2025 class they went and got Chad wood for who's an edge rusher but he's 6'4 220 pounds so he's not you know this huge guy necessarily has to take up a ton of space the key to his game is speed and athleticism coming off the edge making life tough on defensive lineman with what he can do um you know Keen Abrams same type of thing from doodo uh another Edge rusher linebacker a dude that's gonna be able to be a standup um guy at the end of the line of scrimmage who can make plays Anthony Williams these are not your traditional big defensive lineman body types but they can still make things happen and it gives you more variety it allows you to play with different fronts to play with different coverages to disguise defenses better because with those type of athletes that have the ability to kind of flex position and play at different levels of the defense it gives you you know that ability to move players around I'm not gonna sugarcoat it losing Dominic Williams was a big deal it was he was a good player he's a really good player I think he's the best he was the best defensive player tcu's had over the last few seasons and he was good at his job which was eating up space making plays the line of scrimmage behind the line of scrimmage and taking on you know multiple blockers being able to stay in his ground and allow linebackers to come downhill and make plays the good news is I'm not gonna act like losing him is not a big deal but in this new defense you have the ability to not need a guy like that I mean you still need players like that you still you're gonna have a nose guard you're gonna have a guy that's on the outside shoulder of the of the offensive guarden three technique that's gonna be that's gonna have to play well in the interior but you have some more flexibility on the defensive line and now you're seeing guys like Jonathan BS Marcel Brooks you know could they become more of a factor on this defense this upcoming season because of that emphasis on speed athleticism and players that can do multiple things and are not just you know space eaters on the inside so that's encouraging as well I really like the vibe around this team right now I didn't love the vibe around the team last year and another thing that Sunny emphasized about this past season that they're trying to improve on this upcoming year the culture was was off and he said it started with him he took responsibility for it but a lot of the things that we thought about how that team was going to respond following the loss to Georgia that didn't happen so how are they you know changing that this upcoming season how are they addressing it this year we'll talk about that and more next and locked on horn FR we are in the dog days of summer man and you might think to yourself there's just not much on right now it's just regular season baseball All-Star break coming up there's just not a lot of great Sports television happening but it's still a great time honestly it's the perfect time to join FanDuel because FanDuel is running discounts and Deals every day of the week there trying to get new customers on board you love sports you love them so much you never want them to stop but with the playoffs now that they've wound down you got fewer games FanDuel keeps it going whenever you want all you have to do is open the app and dream up your bets anytime you want to this summer FanDuel is hooking up all customers with a booster a bonus daily that's right there's something for everyone every day all summer long so head over to fanduel.com and make the most out of your summer FanDuel official sports betting partner a major league BAS ball Rangers won four in a row five in a row they've turned things around lately hopefully Max Sher can keep it going tonight against the Angels FanDuel if you're looking to make some money on Sports it's the only app to use fanduel.com or the FanDuel app discounts and Deals every day during the summer so this is not surprising because if you've listened to lockdown horn frogs this offseason Sunny dyes has mentioned this a couple times this year now I don't know if he's been as blunt as he was today but a common question what the heck happened right you came off a national title appearance you go five and seven what went wrong and Sun's talked about some different things he gave the team a lot of time off last year after such a long season he said he should have curtailed that that set them back they had new offens coordinator and they got a late start to the process and so that held them back in some ways but he's also mentioned that I mean simply put the team just the coaching staff and the team themselves didn't hold themselves accountable enough and a lot of the details and the small things that the team did in 2022 it didn't carry over the next year and sunny took the blame for that he said ultimately it's my fault he basically said listen I thought coming off that amazing season a lot of our returning players would understand this is what we got to do we got to maintain the culture and they didn't do a great job of building the culture and they thought it would just kind of organically happen because of what happened the year before that didn't materialize and so you had a team that ended up uh falling below expectations which was disappointing so it sounds like they've gotten back to that this year I remember after the tech game last season going on a long rant in the postgame show my buddy Matt Jennings joined us we were talking about it and at that time there was so much negativity around the coordinators and I'm not saying that wasn't warranted you know Joe Gillespie ultimately lost his job I think Kendall BRS has a lot of pressure on him this year but I came away from that football game being really frustrated with sunny because there were just so many small things that the team was failing at and there were pre- snap penalties holding penalties they the defense stopped a fourth down during that game and then got flagged for an illegal substitution so it got negated and they gave Tech an automatic first down they missed field goals just it was that game in particular was kind of a case study and if you want to know why TCU failed last year that was a pretty good one to watch they had turnovers they had silly penalties a lot of dumb things happened and they end up losing a winnable game on the road and it was just like the Prototype of man these are these are the temp poles of what bad teams do right bad special teams not paying attention to details and that was just a one of the failures from last season I also recall you know I I've been following Sports long enough that not a whole lot surprises me I think the great thing about sports is that you never really know so we're all making these projections and predictions but you know we can go back every year and be like man I was an idiot I didn't understand what's going on I've never been quite as dumbfounded as I was after that Colorado game though because yeah I mean I had concerns about oh there's not a lot of film to watch Dion's coming in with all this hype they do have some good players they got some talent but I thought at the end of the day like if TCU is the team we think they are they're going to handle business they did not and so that was crazy but I remember the even crazier thing to me was sunny in the press conference afterwards saying I don't think we were I think they were more excited to play than we were today and I was just like man how are you guys not excited to play you got you you saw like you saw everything good that could happen in the season it It ultimately ended in a bad way and then all offseason there was all this hype around Colorado people weren't even really talking about TCU and the team didn't respond and there were multiple moments through the year Iowa State also comes to mind where Sunny just looked confused he looked like he was kind of at his wits end trying to figure out how to get this team to respond and to play like he wanted them to now I think you know some of that is with the transfer portter we got new faces coming in each and every year and so a lot of the carryover that you would traditionally associate with having you know veterans in a college locker room some of that has gone by the wayside just because in some ways you're coaching a new team each and every season but I feel like this year is gonna be a great case study and okay what is like what do the culture of a sunny dyes team look like can they write the ship can they figure it out and can they get to a place where there's more consistency all around and they have better leadership um because it was it was just one of the things that fell by the wayside last season and you know there were a few guys I think Jared Wy and Monty Bailey a few others really tried to bring it but by and large it wasn't it wasn't there and I do you know I said this in segment one I do believe that a huge part of that is predicated on if you got a quarterback the team's willing to follow that makes a big difference so hopefully that's part of the change is just having Josh ho there and having somebody in that locker room that the team can get behind and can rally around this upcoming season we'll come back and wrap things up it's lock on horn frogs at your team every day you can always join the conversation in the YouTube comments you can tweet at me simcock stepen uh yesterday show or Monday show I guess I should say I mentioned just some questions I wanted answer during media days and some of those were today and I ask like what are your biggest concerns what are some questions you have Tanner and Kenny says I'm most concerned about the offensive line and the defense the o line needs to be better if the defense looked as good as they did during spring practice they will be fine yeah that was an interesting subplot to Spring practice was that it felt like as Camp went on the defense got better and better which you would think that would be the the case as those guys kind of learned what was expected of them what was but I I think it's also gonna make a difference in Fall Camp when Josh wber hits the field I am excited about this defense I think Andy aalos brings great energy to this team I like a lot of the different things that they can do with the athleticism they're going to have on the field but yeah you got to see it you know in practice and then o line wise you know the the age-old question now in college football can you build an offensive line through the portal there's not been a lot of teams that have had success with it but I do think they're more talented up front and I think they have guys that are more reliable and consistent up front and so I feel like that in itself will make a difference and hopefully uh they'll get off to a better start and then they'll be able to improve as the year goes on I also did an episode recently about Tai Hawkins who was committed to TCU for a long time ultimately flips his commitment to SMU and uh Malibu Frog who listens the show and watches the show frequently he said Stephen is constantly acting like TCU doesn't have money nobody from Texas goes to TCU 70% out of state and the median family income is 220k let's not do this pity party about SMU paying their way in Money talks and it's a tangible fungible thing that allows for things to happen it's not 1955 anymore um yeah I don't remember like I'm trying to think of the specific thing that you're kind of pointed out there I mean one I am not the traditional TCU student I went to a ju my parents are I mean we did fine but you know anyway uh I graduated in 2015 and listen I understand dcu's got plenty of money I drove around campus I saw the nice facilities buildings I drove my little Nissan Centra around parking lots with Range Rovers and Hummers and everything else I know that people got money there I know that the alumni base has a lot of cash um I'm not coming in here saying like TCU is poor my point was smu's got a lot of cash they're spending it I think that's admirable that they're allocating those resources yeah Money Talks it's the biggest thing in recruiting right now like if you want to get good players you're gonna have to pay for it um I feel like TCU was a little behind in the nil space I think they're catching up and I feel like from a big 12 standpoint they're right there at the top and it seems like with this class there is more funds to allocate to everybody I think the coaching staff is getting more comfortable saying you know what hey let's get uh let's let's invest in these high school players like it's not just about player retention and guys in the transfer portal um it's about throwing money around to these high school guys as well to get that Talent so no I don't think TC was Cash strapped um I feel like they kind of got money whipped here and I don't know if it was because they didn't have the resources available or SMU just paid a crazy amount and they were like you know what we don't think that this is the best way to use our money ultimately there's not a salary cap but there kind of is everybody's got a limit and so you're trying to build the team and you're spreading it around the best way you can so um yeah I don't think that TCU is like behind the eightball I do feel like they're they were a little bit behind it seems like they're catching up now and Malibu frog says that he and his friends are faithful donors and they're donating a lot of money and that's awesome I appreciate that and all TCU fans do but yeah that wasn't really my point um I just think tcu's got to keep working at it and uh SMU is they've got money to spend and good on them if they're gonna do it but you know TC's going to have to also kind of go Toe totoe with them and it's not like SMU is recruiting at a better rate they're just laying at some big name players right now we'll be back uh on Friday it's locked on horn frogs it's your team we do it here every day