TCU Football vs Arkansas at Amon G Carter Stadium on the TCU campus in Fort Worth, Texas on September 10, 2016. Photo by Michael Clements.
Last week's 41-38, double overtime loss to Arkansas was emotional for TCU, but according to head coach Gary Patterson, it wasn't emotional enough.
Patterson talked about the game at his weekly press conference Tuesday. Linebacker Sammy Douglas was also there, discussing the team's perspective on the season. Here are some quotables from the event:
Gary Patterson
On the team's reaction to last week's loss to Arkansas…
“There's a lot of young kids in our locker room. If you go back to two years ago when we lost to Baylor, there wasn't a dry eye. The kids wanted it bad because you have a lot invested. It was an older football team. There was a lot invested. There wasn't as many tears in that locker room the other night as much as I would've liked to have seen.”
On quarterback Kenny Hill's motion that resembled a throat slash following a touchdown…
“I've talked to Kenny. He understands. Just give [the ball] to the referee.”
On the possibility of using a new kicker against Iowa State on Saturday…
Arkansas blocked TCU kicker Ryan Graf's field goal in the final seconds of regulation, forcing overtime.
“Kickers are like pitchers. They're like corners. Really there's not anything good to say to them. They have to have ice in their veins to go about their business. What he's going to have to handle is, the week before, they iced him and he hit the crossbar [in the season opener against South Dakota State, Graf's kick bounced off the bar but still fell between the uprights]. Probably what I'm going to do is probably run the other kicker in next time.”
“It's just a game…”
“The key is, it's just a game. The game is more important to me because it's my job, and my coaches' and my players'. You get to a point where everybody's involved and they're fired up about it, but the bottom line to it is not enough to personally challenge people, unless somebody really does something wrong.”
Linebacker Sammy Douglas
On watching the tape from the Arkansas game...
“On the field, you don't really realize it. Then when you look at the film, you realize, ‘Why was I doing that?' You've got to correct it and keep going forward.”
On how last week's loss impacted the team...
“Once you start winning a lot, you feel like you're unstoppable. Sometimes you just need to get woken up and get beaten sometimes, so get back up and keep moving forward.”