Warning: The views expressed in spring games do not necessarily reflect the views of the upcoming football season.
It’s important to say this out loud from time to time to prevent wild overreactions. That being said, TCU's quarterbacks clearly had a rough outing during their spring game Saturday.
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, incumbent starter Kenny Hill finished the day 3-for-9 for 15 yards and two interceptions. Touted true freshman Shawn Robinson went 10-for-22 for 90 yards, a touchdown and two more INTs.
The Horned Frogs’ offense did not score on 15 of their 16 drives. These are less than desirable results. Accuracy issues, drops, poor decision making, an inability to sustain drives -- all these flaws sound familiar.
In fairness, what Hill and his fellow QBs accomplished behind closed doors for 14 practices is significantly more important than one scrimmage in front of the public. And TCU is going to have a pretty darn good defense; that much seems clear.
And, of course, one could point out the struggling TCU offense in the spring game of 2014 bared no resemblance to the unstoppable TCU offense of the 2014 season. Coach Gary Patterson isn’t a big fan of spring games, and his staff keeps them as un-televised and vanilla as possible. He did come to his quarterbacks’ defense after the scrimmage.
“We’ve got to catch the ball a lot better if we’re going to win any ballgames,” Patterson told reporters. “As I say, you can’t just blame it on quarterbacks.”
Robinson overthrew a few balls and showed some nervousness, which is to be expected for his first spring in the program. Hill, the Big 12’s leader in interceptions last season, is still learning to not force things.
“One was a good play,” Patterson said of Hill’s first interception. “The other one, he just threw it to us. We’ve got to be better than that. But you’ve also got to say that the defense did a good job, too.”
And the offense will continue to be a work in progress this summer. The Frogs have enough skill talent to do some damage in this conference, so long as their QBs take a big step forward from what they showed Saturday.
“We’ve got to keep getting better,” Patterson told reporters. “We felt we got better in the offensive line. We progressed at quarterback. So we’ll see how it goes.”