With TCU’s loss to BYU on Saturday, Sonny Dykes’ seat keeps warming up.
As the Cougars gutted out a 17-10 win in Fort Worth, the Horned Frogs fell to 0-2 in Big 12 play for the first time since 2013.
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Additionally, TCU has now scored just four touchdowns across three games against power conference opponents this season.
“Obviously we’ve got to play better. That’s the biggest thing, is we’ve got to be able to score points. I think we wasted a really impressive defensive performance tonight. I thought our guys played incredibly hard, obviously they played well enough for us to win the game. We’ve got to continue to get better offensively,” Dykes told reporters postgame.
“… BYU is a very good defensive football team. We knew it was going to be some tough sledding tonight, they have a good team. But we’ve got to find a way to score points if we’re going to win some games, and our guys understand that. We’ll get better, we will.”
TCU did limit typically-explosive BYU to just 17 points and a mere 62 passing yards, but such defensive success wasn’t enough to overcome the Horned Frogs’ struggles on offense.
“I thought we certainly played our best tonight,” Dykes said. “(BYU)’s a good football team, a good offensive team. I thought we played incredibly hard on offense, defense and special teams across the board. We’ve got to be able to score more points, but defensively, I thought we certainly played well enough to have a chance to win the game.”
BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier may have had his shakiest passing performance to date, but he led an effective Cougars rushing attack that ended the night with more than 150 yards on the ground, including 66 yards and two touchdowns from Bachmeier himself.
“You’ve got to give their quarterback credit,” Dykes said. “He’s a very good football player, he kind of took over the game when they needed him to, and that’s what great players do. He’s a special guy, you know, he made some really big-time plays.”
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The Cougar defense also came to play, snagging an interception and allowing less than 2.5 TCU yards per carry, but BYU”s pass rush made the loudest noise with four sacks.
“(BYU is a) good pass rushing team,“ Dykes said. ”… We were working so hard to stay out of those third downs and long. They’re going to get you. I mean, they’ve gotten people all year when you get into those situations.
“There’s a couple of times I felt like we could have gotten rid of the ball and we didn’t, so we’ve got to learn from that and get rid of the ball in those situations.”
Dykes, who went 18-8 between 2024-25 and took TCU to the national championship game in 2022, may be nearing the end of his Horned Frogs tenure.
TCU has a bye this coming week, but should Dykes still be with the program when it faces Baylor on Oct. 17, finding new job security will come through getting the offense back on track.
“We’re just not scoring points right now, we’ve got to figure out how to do it,” Dykes said. “We’ll sit down, take a look at everything we’re doing obviously and find ways to improve, because we’ve got to score more than one touchdown a game.”
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