Steven Johnson: Sonny Dykes Adds Grizzled Former Head Coaches to His Staff

365 Sports Stephen Johnson covers TCU for the Fort Worth Star Telegram stepen thanks for your time on the show as always and uh saw the note about Todd Graham Dana hogerson joining sunny dkes at his staff uh your thoughts about just building up guys with Incredible knowledge and experience well I think I think Sunny's perspective has always been you can never have enough experience and never have enough smart people around on your staff gr's been a pretty present I mean pretty pres have practiced the last two years now I feel like I see him almost every day he was there today actually as well too so former head coach won a lot of ball games from my understanding he'll be working with the offense kind of explaining things how how he as a defensive coordinator would attack tcu's offense and hogon will be doing the same thing he was out there for his spring practice uh all the way back I want to say in March if I remember correctly so no surprise that he's joining the staff either and sunny always talks about when he after things didn't go didn't goes way at Cal he got his chance to be an analyst here at TCU and that kind of allows him to reset his career so I think he's also using this as an opportunity to give those guys an opportunity as well Stephen um So the plan is to have defensive coach work with the offensive coordinator and offensive coach work with the defensive coordinator um I mean I don't know how unique this is because it all works differently but it does seem like a pretty clever little plan I think so I mean and when you really think about it it seem like when you think about Nick sa and kind of at the height of their run it always seemed like they were hiring some type of former head coach to be one of their 20 or 30 offensive analysts so I think like I said man anytime you can bring in smart guys that have won at this one at a high level you know hogerson is one of the best offensive Minds in the game Graham at his Peak has some really good defenses I think you know it's a it's a win-win either way those guys get opportunity to coach stay close to the game they love and sunny keeps to add add two more bright Minds to his staff so he can use them as a resource Stephen if you were to break down tcu's offseason in the nutshell what do you think the the main headline or theme for this off season would be it's talking about the defense uh the defense dominating in the spring even though there were a lot of injuries on offense uh Andy aalos has a trap record of turning around defenses getting after the quarterback at Boise State in Oregon and you know TCU that was one of the main issues last year with 335 defense so to see what they did in the screen was a breath of fresh air they have a lot of talent a lot of depth on that side of the ball on the flip side I think with the offense the offense has a lot of question marks so the first one will be about Josh Hoover the second one will be about the offensive line so it remains to be seen we're only two days into camp but I'll be very curious to see how the offense progresses as they start going live and getting deeper into Camp when we had sunny dkes on with us in Vegas at Big 12 media days he gushed over Josh Hoover but that's not the perfect project yet right or not project that's there's it's still a big work in progress correct yeah absolutely I think he has the armed Talent he has the intangibles and the intangibles I'm sure is what he raved about they love him in that building and they want to see him do well not just because obviously it's their job to win games but he wants it bad enough and people want to see him succeed but I think the thing as Sunny touched on the other day is Josh's Next Step would be understanding and learning to be okay with the completion be okay with the check down and not always rely on that armstr to try to TI those balls through those Tight Windows just because you can do it doesn't mean you necessarily have to so that'll be his next step and I think he'll also be able to show more of his uh Mobility as well too just because they have more depth so they'll be able to use use him more in that area of the game as well they would got kin seals as as a depth piece as much as anything else but I'm just curious just throughout the offseason if you've heard much on the freshman in hos Haney not that he's expected to play anytime soon but I just remember watching him I think it was a year ago in high school and as tremendous player just is there any early talk about uh you know his addition I think uh I think he had a positive spring he he he went through a lot of adversity getting those second team reps just because he was doing so much of it with walk- on receivers and guys who you know won't end up playing in the fall so I think that was kind of his first bit of adversity and I think he handled it well his talent is really Supreme and I think they just can't wait to see what he can become down the line obviously he has a winning background AO with all those state championships track speed also has really good arm strength his talent is evident he just needs to get season I think he'll uh I think that will come over time but I do think it was great for him to have that experience of getting those RS as a second team quarterback in the spring what is uh right now you say the Comfort level with Kendall BRS as he moves into another season with coach dkes and TCU based on what Sunny said the other day I would say a seven or eight he says the offense is further ahead schematically than they were at any time last year so if we're just taking by's word they seem more confident in the system especially with the scale guys but for me the question Still Remains you got all these new pieces on the offensive line you got to see if guys can make it through Camp healthy and then of course you're gonna have a brand new starting running back with Cam cook who I like but I think he only got 16 carries last year so he's a bit of an unknown you have talented receiver with Savon Williams but this is a guy that has shown flashes but hasn't done anything consistently consistently so now if you're TCU you put up a lot of yards last year you put up a lot of points on bad teams now I think for them is about being consistent starts with the red zone and starts with that offensive line being able to assert yourself a little lot more on the ground game Sunny DK is confident though we talked to him at Big 12 media days a couple weeks ago and he seems to have you know uh figured out everything they did wrong last year and and addressed it now again you got to play the games out to see how it goes in the field but uh there was certainly a different vibe you know then when we talked to him before spring a few months ago like he he really does feel like there's something special with this team do you get that from him I think so so the thing is it seemed like after the national championship if you pay attention to their transfer class they brought in a lot of guys from some of those bigname schools that I don't want to say none of them panned out but I think this year you kind of saw them Swit their philosophy where they just they took a lot more proven players a lot of guys that were um Quality locker room guys that had experience and now you're seeing some of those guys that maybe weren't the biggest names on you know some of the recruiting websites but there could be potential starters talking about a guy like Memphis transfer cam Smith we got Russ with the first team at safety they got Caleb Elon or from Cal and I think that was a big time addition anytime you can add an allconference linebacker to your room I think that's a major addition to the roster so they have a lot of guys they brought in that may didn't didn't get a lot of notori notoriety on social media but there's a lot more dep we just have to see I just have so many questions about the offense not that it's lacking because of talent but just can they all put it together Stephen what's your verdict on the new uniforms the the the update they no longer have what I think a lot of people refer to as like the Black Panther collar that very unique to TCU sort of a collar design going a little bit more uh plain I guess you could say but they still got the black Al alternate and all that what do you think of the shakeup they had uniform wise look I think when you have their their color combination it's going to be pretty hard for your uniforms to look bad I think they look especially once the players put start doing the accessories with the cleat and the sleeves and the gloves but it just really feels like TCU just lost something when they just had the collar remov it was such a unique look and even though the uniforms technically weren't aren't that different that collar just does so much work man it really kind of gave the uniform some pop the silver Chrome the purple as well too now when you see it it's just I don't know they just look they look like any other typical team but like I said it's a good color combination they'll be fine but it's just so been so disappointing to see all these New Jersey reveals and they all look like carbon copies of each other or they're just straight up on it yeah you almost feel like they're they're changing jerseys now just to do it instead of sell new jerseys Yeah well yeah the merchandise and all of that but some of these jerseys you wonder how much they're actually going to sell if they're not something that people like or that that has a little zip to them I always thought that the uh the collar that they had was obviously it was unique it was almost like somebody that wore a necklace with a shark teeth in it it's the Black Panther necklace yeah it's it's really really cool and and and I thought it did separate them from most everybody else yeah absolutely and in my mind unless you're a absolute Blue Blood tradition pen state Alabama Texas where you just have these signature looks I think you should go for the Gus and try to be as unique and have your uniforms pop off as much as you can that'll help you with recruiting it help you stand out but a lot of the people have theories that eventually we're going to see I guess ads come on these jerseys which is why you're seeing them so plain and almost nothing on them except on the very end of the shoulders and whatnot I guess I can see that happening that's the only explanation I can see to every single team having the same EX jerseys and the jerseys don't have as much personality as I'm used to college football uniforms have I I have a theory that that Nike just brought in a guy and his name's like Gart or something and they're like oh he's he's he's the fashion guy and he's like this year we are going understated and that's what we're going to do it's going to be stripes and that's it and they're like oh brilliant clap clap clap and everybody's like okay well whatever yeah there's there's that maybe they were busy with the Olympics uniforms put their team on the college football beat or something Gart is going to hunt you down Craig did you have one more for stepen oh I I didn't know if you had one more question for Stephen or not Stephen uh thanks for your time I how much do you think is on the line when I know they have to play Stanford that's a late game on the road in Long Island and then UCF and that's the conference game how much is on the line in your opinion when it comes to the game with SMU this year here at the end of September well I think for bragen R especially with the Rivalry basically basically ending or going on pause however you want to look at it all these games are going to be more intense than ever now um the robbery already took a step the soon sun came over a couple years ago so I imagine the intensity is only gonna be hiding you have snu now they're taking a couple TCU guys out of the portal they flipped their quarterback Ty Hawkins a couple weeks ago so I think that's gonna be that narrative andu now is in the power for a conference so to them you got to think this is their moment they feel like to catch up to TCU or P pull closer I think they have a pretty good recruiting class so it'll be especially if TCU comes into that game three and one or in the flip side let's say you start one and two with losses to UCF for Stanford now the desperation will be extremely high for TCU or if you're on the flip side 3 and 0 SMU would love to deliver some payback because as bad as TCU was last year we all remember they handled one of the bestu team in program history with relative ease I I know that'll be on their mind as well thanks for your time Stephen always a pleasure to have you on the show Steph Johnson covers TCU for the Fort Worth Star Telegram and uh another another Pro