TCU Football: 2017 season preview, predictions

Here is your 2017 TCU football preview complete with predictions. Can Gary Patterson get his team back on track after a disappointing 2016 season?

The TCU fans have become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and that lifestyle does not include losing. The Horned Frogs have only had three losing seasons in Gary Patterson’s 16 seasons at the school. The 2016 season was his second such season in the last four years.

Possibly the most impressive thing about Patterson’s tenure at TCU is not just the infrequency of losing seasons, but what he does immediately following them.

In 2004, the Horned Frogs finished 5-6 in their final season in Conference-USA. The next season TCU went 11-1 and won the Moutain West Conference with a perfect 8-0 record in their first season in the league.

After a 4-8 effort in 2013, Trevone Boykin led the Horned Frogs to a 12-1 mark the next year, had them just outside the first College Football Playoff, and won the Peach Bowl in blowout fashion.

Last season, Patterson was forced to not only replace his star quarterback but had just two starters back on offense. The offense was predictably much worse under Texas A&M transfer Kenny Hill. Despite having far more returning experience, a few injuries to the secondary made the defense take a step back too.

In fairness to Patterson and the Horned Frogs, they fell below .500 because of a Liberty Bowl loss to Georgia 31-23, and that was far from their only one-score defeat. They dropped double-overtime games to Arkansas and Texas Tech at home by three points each. TCU fell to Oklahoma by just six after scoring 22 points in the fourth quarter to cut the lead to just a field goal with over five minutes to play.

Can TCU get more consistent play and flip a couple of those coin flips in their favor this season?