GLENDALE, Ariz. — In the native habitat of their mascot, they came to the western desert to earn the respect they had craved for decades. Cast off by both peers and conference offices over the decades, TCU had fought for admiration and adulation in the face of doubt year after year, game after game.
On the final day of 2022, they earned it all — and then some.
The Horned Frogs continued their storybook season in a manner fit for their next destination below the Hollywood Hills, punching a ticket to the national championship game on Jan. 9 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles by slaying second-ranked Michigan, 51-45, in the wildest, highest-scoring Fiesta Bowl ever.
Having entered the first of two College Football Playoff semifinals on New Year’s Eve as a decided underdog, TCU acted like the far more poised and experienced squad. After an inauspicious start in allowing a 53-yard run on the very first play of the game, the Frogs responded to every punch, counterpunch and setback thrown their way by the bluest of blue bloods looking to make the country party like it’s 1997 once again.
Instead, it was the Big 12 side that moved to the brink of securing the one golden trophy to rule them all in two weeks as they await the winner of the Peach Bowl semifinal between the top-ranked and reigning national champions Georgia and No. 4 Ohio State.
Here are three takeaways for the Horned Frogs after the back-and-forth game.
1. TCU’s defense was up to the task
Entering the contest, much was made about the perceived mismatch that TCU’s defense had to overcome. Michigan had the fourth-best rushing offense in the country, touted the Joe Moore Award winners as the best offensive line in college football and had a host of four- and five-star recruits up front that looked good getting off the bus and were not out of place in an NFL venue like State Farm Stadium.
Defensive coordinator Joe Gillipse’s unit would have none of that kind of thinking, however, and proved early on that it was more than up to the task of handling an offense that had typically smothered opponents. Though it allowed Donovan Edwards to rip off a 53-yard run on the first play of the game, TCU was fast, physical and flying around with purpose in holding J.J. McCarthy and company to just 3-of-13 on third down, and stonewalled the maize and blue on multiple drives in the red zone.
Defensive lineman Dylan Horton was a constant presence in the backfield, notching six tackles, four sacks — three in the first half alone — and a forced fumble. Safety Bud Clark also set the tone that the Horned Frogs were here to play for it all with his early 41-yard pick-six of McCarthy, undercutting Ronnie Bell’s route ever so slightly for his fifth and biggest interception of the season. Then there was linebacker Dee Winters, whose leaping pick that he ran back 29 yards late in the third quarter seemed to all but book the team’s trip to Los Angeles for the national title game.
There’s been a misnomer about Big 12 defenses being soft that has started to get disproved over the last several years, and on the biggest stage the sport has to offer, TCU helped dispel things further. Nobody in the Big Ten runs anything close to Gillipse’s 3-3-5, but given the problems it gave the Wolverines, perhaps that changes some moving forward after Saturday’s effort.
2. Duggan Grinds It Out
Heisman Trophy runner-up Max Duggan had a ton of attention on him given the position he plays, but the veteran quarterback would probably be the first to tell you he had far from his best game in a TCU uniform. He finished just 14-of-29 for a modest 225 yards (two TDs, two INTs) and seemed frustrated after just about every incomplete pass.
Going down the field was a particular problem, as many of Duggan’s passes sailed high or out of bounds despite a little daylight. After throwing just four interceptions all season, he also tossed two in the Fiesta Bowl, though both were off the hands of receiver Derius Davis and should have been caught for chain-moving first downs.
Still, the senior showcased plenty of the moxie that earned him all those Heisman votes, grinding out several possessions with his legs (57 yards, two scores) and keeping several plays alive in the face of a pretty ferocious pass rush. He has been a gamer all season long when the lights seemed to shine the brightest and did so once again in the national semifinal when his team needed a key play. Sure, the stat line may not have been stellar, but the end result was all that mattered in the end for somebody who has been through plenty with the program over the past few years.
3. All Glory to the Hypnotoad
There have been many magical, out-of-nowhere seasons throughout the illustrious history of college football and the run TCU is on over the course of 2022 should be remembered with the best of them (regardless of what happens in Los Angeles on Jan. 9).
The Horned Frogs were just the second team (after last year’s Michigan side) to be in the College Football Playoff after starting the season unranked and seemed even further off the radar than the Wolverines did in 2021. They were picked seventh in the preseason Big 12 poll and had the added hindrance of a brand-new staff taking over in a league that was still undergoing quite a bit of transition. Yet, here they are, playing for the school’s third national title and first since Dutch Meyer’s famed squads in the pre-war 1930s.
Duggan, who wasn’t even the season-opening starter, headlined the rise of many players on the team that went from obscure or little-known to full-blown college football stars under the spotlight over the coming days. Now they have locked in legendary status at the small private school in Fort Worth who hopped from the WAC to Conference USA to the Mountain West in the years after the Southwest Conference broke apart before finally landing in the elusive Power Five with an invite to the Big 12 before the 2012 campaign.
TCU became the first team since 1975 to win seven straight games by 10 points or less over the course of the run it was on, and capped off the second-biggest win improvement in FBS this year by winning seven more games than it did last season.
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