Editor’s note: Andrew Coker is in his fifth season with TCU Football and will be making his 34th consecutive start Oct. 14 against BYU. The Frogs (3-3) will be playing with backup quarterback Josh Hoover, who is subbing in for the injured Chandler Morris (knee) after he left the game Oct. 7 in a loss at Iowa State.

Everyone is in a good mood. You have to be because if you dwell on things, they’re only going to get worse. You have to try to find a way to recreate that environment of when we were winning. So that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s not like we’ve forgotten it. It’s just recreate what we had when it was good. As a captain, it’s part of my responsibility to try to help with the environment the best I can.

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When your quarterback goes down, the teams that go into a fire drill struggle. On the sideline, there was no sense of, “Oh, my God, what are we going to do? Who’s it going to be?” It’s more of just, “This is what we have, this is what we got, we have a good team and we’re going run with whoever we have at quarterback.”

It’s not like we’re going from somebody who’s an A player to and F player. Josh Hoover is a good player. He’s a really good player. We’ve just got to get him some confidence and get him some experience so he can showcase his talent.

He’s a committed player. He’s a great teammate. He’s an even better person. He wants to win and will do whatever it takes. I don’t think anybody prepares more in this entire facility, coaches included, than him.

I was telling him after the game, “I started as a redshirt freshman, and it wasn’t pretty. These are your first snaps out here. Some of them weren’t pretty, and some of them were pretty. Some stuff you did was really good.” I was like, “It’s going to take a lot of experience for you to get to where you’re so comfortable out there that it becomes second nature. You can prepare all you want, but actually being out there and getting all the reps is going to help you. So just take it rep by rep and day by day.”

At practice he was starting to feel more comfortable, which is good. Being an experienced player, I was just trying to let him know that just because you’re inexperienced, that doesn’t mean you can’t be good. Experience is going to help you, yes, but one play at a time. Don’t start looking ahead. Just do what you need to do in the moment.

Photo by Percise Windom

I think we did a great job in practice. Whenever he was back there, nothing changed. Do your job, he’ll do his and we all do ours. Nothing really changes. We need to do our job.

I am back at right tackle. We made the switch right before the Iowa State game. I think it helped us overall. With me at right tackle, it just gives us a little bit more experience off the edge. For the first time, it actually felt kind of weird being back over there. I played there for so long, and I played left for so long. I feel like I’m home, but I don’t feel comfortable at home. It was kind of interesting, but it was good. I’m getting back into it.

BYU is actually pretty good. I’ve never really watched them play. They have some good defensive ends, and their defense does some things that I haven’t seen before just because I’ve played so much Big 12 football, and now they’re in the league.

They always try to plus-one you in the box, which means they’re always going to have one more guy to block. You don’t see that much in the Big 12. Now that we run so much 11 personnel [one running back, one tight end, three receivers], we have six in the core or in the box. Well, they have seven. I haven’t seen that too often. It’s going to be different to see, but we have a good plan for it.