Bryan Fischer
College football writer
GLENDALE, Ariz. — In their mascot’s native habitat, they’ve come to the Western Desert to earn the respect they’ve craved for decades. Shunned by 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 last day of 2022, they won it all – and more.
The Horned Frogs continued their storytelling season in a manner befitting their next destination under the Hollywood Hills, clinching a ticket to the national championship game on Jan. 9 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles by killing second-seeded Michigan , 51-45, in the craziest and most successful Fiesta Bowl ever.
After entering the first of two college football playoff semifinals on New Year’s Eve a decided underdog, TCU acted as the more evenly matched and experienced team. After an inauspicious start by allowing a 53-yard run on the game’s very first play, they responded to every punch, counter-punch and backhand thrown their way by the bluest of blue bloods looking to party. country like it’s 1997 all over again.
Instead, it’s the Big 12 team who are set to secure the only gold trophy to rule them all in two weeks as they await the winner of the Peach Bowl semi-final. between top-ranked and defending national champions Georgia and No. 4 Ohio State.
Here are three takeaways for the Horned Frogs after the home-and-away game.
1. TCU’s defense was up to snuff
Going into the contest, there was a lot of talk about the perceived mismatch that TCU’s defense had to overcome. Michigan had the fourth-best rushing offense in the nation, touted Joe Moore Award winners as the best offensive line in college football, and had a host of four- and five-star rookies up front who looked good coming down from the bus and were out of place at 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 they were more than up to the task of handling an offense that had typically stifled opponents. Although it allowed Donovan Edwards to snatch a 53-yard run on the first play of the game, TCU was quick, physical and flying in a bid to hold JJ McCarthy and company to just 3 of 13 on third down and had stuck corn and blue on multiple drives in the red zone.
Defensive lineman Dylan Horton was a constant presence in the backfield, scoring 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 it all with his 41-yard first pick from McCarthy, slightly undercutting Ronnie Bell’s route to his fifth and biggest interception of the season. Then there was linebacker Dee Winters, whose leaping pick he knocked back 29 yards late in the third quarter seemed anything but to book the team’s trip to Los Angeles for the national title game. .
There has been a misnomer that the Big 12 defenses are soft, which has begun to be disproved in recent years and, on the biggest stage the sport has to offer, TCU has helped dispel more things. Nobody in the Big Ten comes close to Gillipse’s 3-3-5, but given the problems it gave Wolverines, maybe that changes something after Saturday’s effort.
2. Duggan grinds
Heisman Trophy finalist Max Duggan had a lot of attention on him given the position he’s in, but the veteran quarterback would probably be the first to tell you he was far from his best game in a TCU uniform. He went just 14 of 29 for a modest 225 yards (two touchdowns, two interceptions) and looked frustrated after just about every incomplete pass.
Getting downfield was a particular problem, as many of Duggan’s passes sailed high or out of bounds despite some daylight. After throwing just four interceptions all season, he also threw two in the Fiesta Bowl, though both were out of the hands of receiver Derius Davis and should have been caught for chain first downs.
Still, the senior showed plenty of moxie that earned him all those Heisman votes, grinding multiple possessions with his legs (57 yards, two scoring) and keeping multiple plays alive in the face of a pretty ferocious pass rush. He was a player all season when the lights seemed to shine brightest and did it once again in the national semi-finals 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 someone who’s been through a lot with the program over the past few years.
3. Glory to the Hypnotoad
There have been many magical, out-of-nowhere seasons throughout the illustrious history of college football and the TCU race is on during 2022 should be remembered with the best of them (regardless of what takes place in Los Angeles on January 9).
The Horned Frogs were only the second team (after last year’s Michigan team) to make the college football playoffs after starting the season unranked and looked even further off the radar than the Wolverines in 2021. They were picked seventh in the pre-season Big 12 poll and had the added hurdle of brand new personnel taking over in a league that was still going through quite a bit of transition. Yet here they are, playing for the school’s third national title and first since Dutch Meyer’s famous teams in the pre-war 1930s.
Duggan, who wasn’t even the season-opening starter, made headlines for the rise of many of the team’s players who have gone from obscure or little-known to college football stars to fully in the spotlight over the next few days. Now they’ve locked in legendary status at the small Fort Worth private school that jumped from the WAC to the USA Conference to the Mountain West in the years after the Southwest Conference broke up before finally landing in the elusive Power Five with an invitation to the Big 12 ahead of the 2012 campaign.
TCU became the first team since 1975 to win seven straight games by 10 or fewer points in the run, and capped the second-biggest win improvement in FBS this year by winning seven more games than last season. .
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