TCU’s main man
Coach Gary Patterson has 4-0 Horned Frogs climbing toward top of pyramid of goals
Before every season, Gary Patterson hangs a poster of a pyramid at the front of TCU’s meeting room, something he admittedly cribbed from John Wooden. Inside each level of the pyramid are various goals, from winning all of their nonconference games all the way up to the national championship, meant to be colored in purple as TCU knocks them off the list.
About halfway up this year’s pyramid, Patterson carved out a small sliver for the game at Oklahoma State. He colored it in after TCU went on the road two Saturdays ago and knocked off what was the country’s No. 7 team 44-31. But last week, as TCU enjoyed its only bye of the season, Patterson made sure to emphasize the small proportions he originally had assigned to what was viewed from the outside as a massive win for his program.
“You just have to understand people handle failure a lot better than they handle success,” Patterson said. “You have to be careful telling (the players) too much, because that’s what they start believing.”
Has there ever been a better way to sum up Gary Patterson? Has there ever been a clearer distillation of the ethos that has guided his program through multiple conference changes and eventually turned it from a novelty act on the national stage to consistent achiever in a Power Five conference?
Now in his 17th year at TCU, with his legacy firmly in place and a statue in front of the stadium that has been transformed into a palace thanks to the success he built, Patterson’s program is again positioned to do something special.
And though his team being 4-0 should feel like a surprise after the Horned Frogs struggled to a 6-7 record last season, it actually makes perfect sense.
Though there is nothing obvious connecting 2004, 2013 and 2016 — the only three years in which Patterson coached a below-.500 team — it sure doesn’t seem like a coincidence that he’s come right back each time with a different formula, a new resolve and lots of wins.
In 2005, TCU followed a 5-6 season with 11-1. In 2014, the Horned Frogs went from 4-8 to 12-1 and within a whisker of making the first College Football Playoff. And though there’s plenty of work remaining for the Horned Frogs this time, the trajectory is again pointing toward the theory that Patterson himself might handle failure better than success.
“I remember in 2004; we’d been here since 1997, and 2004 was the first losing season we’d had,” Patterson said. “It was my third or fourth year as a head coach, and I remember a kid saying to me, ‘I thought we were just TCU and we wouldn’t lose.’
“We’re in a pro market, a world of instant (gratification), so what happens is people lose their way. I watch them on TV and say, ‘You better be careful, he’s becoming invisible.’ When you think you can say anything because of who you are or do anything and nothing ’s going to happen to you. As you find out in this day and age, that’s not true anymore. Becoming invisible is how you fall. I suppose it would be that I’ve been probably a better underdog than I am a front-runner.”
Unlike many of his contemporaries whose tenures got stale the longer they stayed at a school, the 57-year old Patterson has never been afraid to make big changes. The biggest occurred in 2014 when Patterson, whose defense had long been the foundation of his program, learned to embrace an up-tempo style with Trevone Boykin at quarterback, instantly putting the Horned Frogs in national title consideration.
This time, the TCU renaissance has had less to do with reinvention than with recovery.
Last fall, Patterson was suffering from knee pain, which limited what he was able to do in practice. Though for most coaches that might be viewed as an excuse, you only need to watch the fiery Patterson once on the sidelines to understand how he uses his body, his expressions and his voice to lead and motivate. Quite simply, he couldn’t coach the way he used to, and he believes that filtered down to the rest of the team.
“I feel a lot better,” said Patterson, who had his knee replaced a few days after TCU’s Liberty Bowl loss to Georgia. “I’ve been a lot more involved and been able to use a lot more energy, so hopefully through the years that’s one of the things people say is, ‘TCU plays hard,’ and you’d like to think that has a little bit to do with me and the way I drive them. (This year) I’ve been in the middle of all of it from the very beginning starting in the spring.”
And though much of the credit for TCU’s early success has gone to quarterback Kenny Hill making fewer reckless mistakes than in his early “Kenny Thrill” days at Texas A&M before transferring, TCU also looks faster and more mature on defense. Though it’s unlikely Patterson will ever coach a defense in the Big 12 that is flirting with shutouts on a near-weekly basis the way it did a decade ago, he knows when it is and isn’t effective.
Last year, TCU couldn’t stop people enough to win ballgames. This year, the Horned Frogs completely shut down Arkansas on the road and were able to slow down Oklahoma
State’s high-powered offense just enough to make it look a little bit like the old Patterson defense.
Part of that, he says, is that TCU has finally gotten back on a recruiting cycle where it’s redshirting a significant number of freshmen, something it couldn’t afford to do in its first few years in the Big 12.
“Over a period of time, that just makes you a lot better football team,” Patterson said. “Older, more mature, stronger.”
With West Virginia coming in this week, followed by a trip to Kansas State and then Oklahoma in Nor-
man on Nov. 11, there are plenty of hurdles to clear before the Horned Frogs can come close to a Playoff berth. But if nothing else, Patterson has reminded us that he’s still relevant, still evolving, still pushing as hard ever to get back in the mix and climb that pyramid.
While it’s true we didn’t exactly see this coming, we should have expected nothing less.