TCU Horned Frogs vs New Mexico Lobos Football Preview

The Texas Christian Horned Frogs played a ragged, sloppy, uneven, defensively vulnerable game… in their season opener against the Baylor Bears on Friday, September 2. They haven’t fixed their issues or cured their ailments – not genuinely, not fully. After a bye week at the midpoint of the season, coach Gary Patterson’s young team doesn’t have to get everything right, but it certainly needs to show that it can play a more airtight brand of ball.

The midseason diagnosis is alarming for the TCU crew. No one was expecting a perfect season – not with Boise State joining the Mountain West Conference and appearing on the Frogs’ schedule in the middle of November. However, TCU has already forfeited what leverage it might have possessed in the chase for an upper-tier bowl. The purple people from Fort Worth, Texas, have already lost to a Baylor team that, as has become painfully clear over the past few weeks, plays absolutely no defense. They also gave away a loss to Southern Methodist, conceding 40 points on home turf due to the persistently leaky nature of a young secondary that sits at the mercy of a prepared passing attack. Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III and Southern Methodist offensive guru June Jones have found the holes in the Frogs’ back line of defense, causing TCU to slide to 4-2 through its first six games.

Even in victory, TCU has not found the sledding to be particularly smooth this year. The Frogs’ most recent game, a late-night fight at San Diego State on Oct. 8, was bumpy and rocky until the final few minutes. TCU led SDSU by a paltry six-point margin (20-14) when it probably should have been leading by 20. The Frogs outgained the Aztecs by 150 yards, 446 to 296, but did not parlay their many drives into an accordingly high number of points. Four turnovers, some of them in the red zone, undid the work of the Frogs’ offensive line, which mashed the Aztecs all evening long. It wasn’t until TCU’s defense snared an interception of a San Diego State pass in the final minutes that the Frogs were able to breathe easy – they scored a late touchdown to put the game out of reach for San Diego State and avoid a 3-3 train wreck.

This weekend’s upcoming opponent, the New Mexico Lobos, won’t offer much resistance. The Lobos have already lost their head coach, the disgraced and discredited Mike Locksley, but they’ve been consistent in his absence… consistently bad. New Mexico has lost to a Football Championship Subdivision team (Sam Houston State) and one of the downmarket teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision (New Mexico State), en route to an 0-6 record. TCU doesn’t need to play a perfect game against New Mexico, but it needs to reduce its bad habits, play with an increased amount of precision, and generally gain crispness before the tougher part of its schedule in the weeks ahead. If TCU doesn’t use its post-bye-week break to get better, it’s not going to achieve much over the remainder of the 2011 season.

> Find a great selection of TCU Horned Frogs apparel & merchandise online as well as the MWC Football Scoreboard!

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer