Editor’s note: Offensive lineman Andrew Coker played Sept. 16 at Houston, near his hometown of Katy, and TCU rolled to a 36-13 victory. Up next on Sept. 23 is the Battle for the Iron Skillet against an improved SMU team. The rivalry game always features some trash talk, and usually the team that wins is the one that stays the most composed.

It was good to be back in Houston. It was good to be home. A lot of those guys who played for Houston, especially on their defensive line, I knew. I talked to them throughout the game, going back and forth. It was fun.

That’s the best game we’ve played so far. We’ve just got to keep on stacking games and stacking games. In all honesty, as a team we felt like we left so much out there, especially on offense.

Photo by Precise Windom

We had three drives in a row where the first play was a penalty or big negative play. We feel like, as a team, if this is what we can do when we play decent, imagine what we can do when we play great and when we play mistake-free. So that’s the goal — to keep on chipping away, aiming toward that goal of playing perfect. That’s always the goal. Even though it’s never happened, that’s always the goal.

I think we’ve proven to everybody in this country that if we do what we’re supposed to do, we can beat anybody on our schedule. It’s that simple. If you do your job and have 11 guys pulling in the same direction at the same time, we’ll get where we want to get to.

SMU is a really good team. They’re always going to be excited to play us in a crosstown rivalry. We need to be excited to play them. It might be the best team that I’ve seen them have ever since I’ve been here. It’s going to be a good test for us.

They’re a lot better defensively this year than they were last year. Absolutely. They got a lot of transfers. They fly around. You can tell that they enjoy playing football and enjoy playing football together. It’s a good thing to see. But we enjoy playing good competition.

Usually when we play SMU, it’s about the time when the turning point of the season is — game three or game four. It’s at the time where if we win this game, a lot of good things can happen. I’m excited for it.

Courtesy of TCU Athletics

These rivalries are the games that you look forward to, that are exciting. It’s going to be a great atmosphere, a lot of talking back and forth. It’s going to be fun.

In our situation, there’s a lot of transfers. They don’t understand the rivalry as much as a guy like me would. I’ve been here for five years. Some guys are going to talk more than others. Some guys are going to talk all game. Some guys are going to stop talking. The last game I wasn’t a talker. Some games I am a talker. It just depends on what kind of switch gets hit that day, but it will come out of me sometimes. I’ve got to keep myself in check.

You want to say make no mistakes, but it’s football. We’re going to make mistakes. It’s how we respond to the mistakes, how we respond to adversity. We’re going to start fast, we’re going to get into the flow in the game, and then it’s about how we respond.