Editor’s note: Things didn’t go as planned for TCU Football in its season opener, but the Horned Frogs have 11 games remaining and can still reach their goals for the 2023 season. However, they can’t overlook Nicholls State, a Football Championship Series (formerly Division I-AA) team.

Andrew Coker looks back at the Sept. 2 game and dials in on the focus for the Sept. 9 contest, also at Amon G. Carter Stadium.

It’s football. It happens. It does us no good to just sit there and feel sorry for ourselves. It’s all about the next one and moving forward. We still have 11 more left. We can still do what we want. All of our goals are in front of us.

I wouldn’t say that it has to be explained. I think it’s my job to be a leader and help us bounce back. I think “explain” is like, it happened already. Why it happened? It doesn’t matter why it happened. I’m here to try to lead guys and get guys back into the mindset that we need to go win this thing.

Photo by Percise Windom

I’m a firm believer in that the most improvement is made from Week 1 to Week 2. It doesn’t matter who we’re playing. A lot of those first-game miscues get cleaned up by Game 2. The false starts, running the wrong routes, formation issues, communication issues, those normally get cleaned up now in practice before the next week. So, I feel good about it. I feel good about us getting those things cleaned up so we can go out and play Nicholls State and play fast.

It’s one of those things where, yeah, you watch film and you see technical things wrong. When you see false starts, that’s just attention to detail and focus. Whenever you see we’re messing up formations or running wrong routes or missing assignments up front, that is just focus, attention to detail, being locked in, knowing what you’re doing and communicating. We get a lot of things cleaned up in the film room. Out at practice is where we make the most improvement.

I don’t think it really matters who we’re playing, honestly. It really just matters that, like with me, and I know a lot of the guys on the team, we’re just ready to get back on the field. We’re just ready to get this taste out of our mouths. It’s such a sour taste, and we all hate it. We’re ready to get back out there. Nicholls State is just next on the schedule.

Photo by Percise Windom

Whenever I watched them on film yesterday and I watched their last game against Sacramento State, I was like, “These guys aren’t bad ballplayers at all.”

It’s one of those things where I could feel today in practice that we weren’t taking them lightly, at least as an offense. We got in the offensive team meeting, and we basically just said, ‘These guys are DI-AA, but these guys are good ballplayers and they’re good enough to embarrass you if you don’t have the right technique and you don’t know what you’re doing.’

And teams like that have nothing to lose. They’re trying to come in here and do whatever they’ve got, all the wrinkles, to try to beat us.

I think that we have to, as a team, adjust to being hunted. We’ve always been hunters. We have to realize how excited and how much teams want to beat us, and we’re going to get everybody’s best every single week. Week in and week out, no matter who we’re playing, bigger schools or smaller schools, we’re going to get everybody’s best.

We have to adjust to them and match where they’re at. Obviously, we didn’t do that very well against Colorado, but it is what it is. It’s in the past, and we just have to learn from it. 

Photo by Percise Windom