FORT WORTH, Texas — The first year of the Sonny Dykes era at
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“He makes my job easy,” Duggan said. “I’ve just got to do whatever I can to get him the ball and he does the rest. I mean, you throw him a five-yard slant route, a five-yard hitch route, he can take it 50. He makes one guy miss and he’s off. He’s a special player. He’s a special kid.”
Dykes addressed a history of his teams starting hot before losing key games late. His 2012 Louisiana Tech team was 9-1 before dropping its last two games and his 2015 Cal team got off to a 5-0 start and finished 8-5. SMU started 8-0 in 2019 but finished 10-3, started 7-1 in 2020 before losing its last two and started 7-0 again in 2021 then lost four of its last five as rumors swirled about Dykes’ job status after TCU fired Gary Patterson.
Dykes told ESPN this week he hasn’t always been at places that had a lot of depth, which was a factor late in the season, as well as maybe winning some early games they possibly shouldn’t have. But he said he’s been evaluating all the factors he can control, including if he wore the team down too much, and acknowledges it is a concerning pattern.
“Historically, our team has gotten off to good starts and not finished very well,” Dykes said after Saturday’s game. “So it’s going to be a challenge for us to finish down the stretch. We know that. This is a different team. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past here or where I’ve been. We’re going to write a different story.”
TCU faces a 5-1 Kansas State team that is also 3-0 in conference play at 8 p.m. ET next Saturday as the topsy-turvy Big 12 continues to take shape.
“Our reward for winning this game is we get to play Kansas State here coming off a bye,” Dykes joked. “So congratulations.”
