FORT WORTH — It’s one of Gary Patterson’s favorite times of the year.
Right up there with the safaris and bowl games and the day after signing day.
A bye week.
Or, as he calls it, a “get-better” week.
The 19th-year TCU head coach loves little more than rolling up his sleeves, turning on the tape and getting the yellow pad out. If he’s at home and his beloved dogs are puddled at his feet, all the better.
At this time, extra time is time to be spent on his football team, and last week, it allowed for a fresh look at his Horned Frogs with the benefit of a game played and at the upcoming opponent, Purdue, with the benefit of two games played.
A gold mine of information.
“We got a lot of things ironed out,” Patterson said Tuesday at his weekly press conference. “I think you could see — us, we’re moving a lot faster at practice, our younger kids are. So it was a learning curve. Rest, give us a chance to step away, get to have some good get-better practices. Got some guys healthier.”
And the Boilermakers? Well, the tape shows they have their own version of Jalen Reagor, a receiver/returner named Rondale Moore, who gets a chance to make a lot of plays and does indeed make a lot of plays. There is a quarterback, Elijah Sindelar, who leads the nation in passing but is also recovering from what his coach, Jeff Brohm, this week called a “slight concussion,” suffered in the victory against Vanderbilt.
Meanwhile, their best defensive tackle, Lorenzo Neal, will probably remain sidelined in his recovery from knee surgery.
It’s all there on Patterson’s yellow pad.
“Really very creative offensively,” he said of the Boilermakers, who got their name courtesy of a headline in the Crawfordsville, Ind., newspaper in 1891 following a 44-0 victory against hometown Wabash College: “Slaughter of Innocents: Wabash Snowed Completely Under by the Burly Boiler Makers from Purdue.”
Boiler maker was a semi-impolite name back then?
The most famous Boilermaker today is Drew Brees, and prolific offense remains in vogue in West Lafayette, Ind., as Patterson referenced. He didn’t need tape to tell him.
“A lot of their staff members, I’ve known for a long time,” he said. “That’s one of the things that happens when you’ve been in the business 36 years. Offensively, everybody knows about their wide receiver. Tight ends, they’ve always had good tight ends. Hopefully the quarterback is OK. You want to play the best.”
So you prepare the best. That’s Patterson’s philosophy.
With extra days, he puts a fresh critical eye on everything. Even one game tells much about what is largely a young team. This isn’t the time for team building. It’s a chance to team fine-tune, even if it’s not even mid-September. You can never miss a “get-better” chance.
“Our thing is just growing up; we have so many new and young guys,” Patterson said. “The best practice we probably had was on Sunday and last Thursday because we’re thinking less. Everybody is understanding what they’re getting into and getting their legs back.”
One more thing:
“One of the positives for us is getting to play in 68-degree weather,” the coach added.
Saturday’s low in West Lafayette is expected to be 61. The kickoff temperature about 78. All there on the yellow pad somewhere, probably.
Along with the plan for the quarterbacks. Patterson said the Frogs would go with the same plan as in the season opener. Which means Alex Delton likely gets the first series with Max Duggan soon to follow and then the “hot quarterback” theory takes over.
“That’s one thing about an off week — everybody gets a chance to improve and get reps and be able to do things, so everybody had a chance to get a lot of work,” Patterson said, meaning the healing trio of Justin Rogers, Mike Collins and Matthew Baldwin, as well. “Early in the season, we call them get-better weeks instead of off weeks. Later in the year, you can’t go good-on-good when you have an off week because you just can’t afford to do it. Early, you still get back to ones versus ones, which we did Tuesday and Wednesday, so we were able to do twos versus twos. We were able to do a lot of that stuff.”
Last week became almost an extension of fall camp. One more week to roll up the sleeves. One more week to “get better.”
One of Patterson’s favorite things.
