In 1999, TCU football (then a proud member of the WAC) visited Jonesboro and narrowly defeated A-State 21-24. The next year, Arkansas State ventured to Fort Worth and absorbed a 3-52 skull-cracking – to be fair, everybody but North Texas cracked our skills in 2000. The next year, TCU joined Conference USA, and we never saw the Horned Frogs again.
College football fans of a certain age will remember TCU as a leading citizen of the Southwest Conference, a power conference before power conferences were invented. When the SWC dissolved in 1995, TCU, SMU and Rice were left with little choice but join the WAC. So began TCU’s serpentine path back to power, which saw the Horned Frogs hop from the WAC to Conference USA to the Mountain West to finally the Big 12 in 2012. In 2022, TCU team reached the College Football Playoff National Championship Game and finished No. 2 in the AP poll, the best national finish of TCU’s Big 12 era.
Last year, Sonny Dykes led the Horned Frogs to a 9-4 record and a victory of USC in the Alamo Bowl. That team was led by wide receiver Eric McAlister (currently shopping for an NFL contract) and Josh Hoover, who now QBs for Curt Cignetti at Indiana. Today’s Horned Frogs are a bit different, playing with blanket assumptions and known unknowns. TCU opened as a 20-point favorite, but are they really?
TCU Crushed Grambling After Losing 15-10 to North Carolina
Against Grambling, starting QB Jaden Craig (6’3″, 225) completed 24 of 31 passes for a career-high 391 yards and four touchdowns. He looked pretty great. But against the Tar Heels, Craig finished 20-of-32 passing for just 175 yards. Two teams: two different guys. After scoring 10 points in the first quarter, the Horned Frogs put up goose eggs for the remaining three. Maybe playing the game in Dublin sapped the Frogs of their hop. It’s possible that Bill Belichick has assembled a world-class defense at North Carolina, and that the team we saw crush Grambling 63-7 is the real TCU. The Red Wolves will find out on Saturday.
Arkansas State Has Had a Similar 2026
Like the Horned Frogs, the Red Wolves opened on the road and absorbed a disappointing loss. Memphis cracked the code in the second half, riding running back Jaylin Carter for 181 yards and four touchdowns, exposing A-State’s inexperienced middle. Red Wolves starting quarterback Trey Owens, sharp in many aspects, also tossed a quartet of devastating interceptions.
Like Sonny Dykes, head coach Butch Jones used Week 2 wisely, using West Georgia as a lab rat for honing Owens’ gameplay decisions while auditioning guys for defensive assignments. The result was a 52-7 victory made possible largely by A-State’s defensive tenacity. The Red Wolves would force four turnovers and score as the result of each one.
Can A-State Find the Brake Pedal on Jeremy Payne?
If the Red Wolves want a shot at winning in Fort Worth, the defense will need to put the leg irons on Jeremy Payne (5’10” 180) and his criminally insane run game. Payne was the lone bright spot for the Horned Frogs in week 1, compiling 142 yards on 25 carries. He bumped his ypc to 8.8 against Grambling, chalking up 79 yards on just nine carries. Payne sees what Carter did to the Red Wolves and he will want a piece of that action.
“We got to get monumentally better on a fundamental level.”
Coach Butch Jones acknowledged that the mistakes made against West Georgia would not be tolerated against TCU. “We got to get monumentally better on a fundamental level,” said the head coach, now in his sixth year at Arkansas State. For Jones, this likely means mitigating turnovers. While Owens remained pick-free against the Wolves, he did lose a fumble on a sack. Both Jones and OC Garrett Altman has stressed taking care of the ball.
During Tuesday’s presser, Jones introduced a complimentary phrase to his term “complimentary football:” Collective football, which involves playing as a single unit and stacking up victories. If it also means not missing tackles and running crisp routes, I’m here for it.
The Red Wolves Run Game Is Stacked & Packed
True freshman Solomon Baggett (5’10” 196) was the Red Wolves leading running back against West Georgia with 70 yards and a touchdown, and he isn’t even listed on the depth chart for Week 3. Instead, we’re projected to see a committee led by Kenyan Clay (6’1″ 223) and buttressed by Ezell Jolly (6’0″ 194), Timothy Carter (6’0″ 215) and James Lee (5’10” 190). That’s a ton of heavy guys pounding what is believed to be a really good TCU defensive line.
How Does Arkansas State Win?
The first quarter played against Memphis is the blueprint: defensive line aggression and a relentless use of the ground game. Trey Owens will want to exploit TCU’s secondary and stretch the field with Hunter Summers and Chauncy Cobb, but the Red Wolves quartet (quintet with Baggett) of effective running backs should be sprinkled with liberal abandon.
That leaves the defense to bend but break as little as possible. The week against West Georgia may have helped the linebacker corps solidify the middle, but the Red Wolves are still vulnerable along the edge. DC Griff McCarly will need plenty of help from the safeties to keep that run game honest.
Also, Coach Jones didn’t miss the TCU tight ends, of whom he was quick to respect. Kari Ashley (6’4″ 225) already has 10 receptions and a pair of touchdowns on the season. Look out of the big guys.
The Final Analysis
Road games against Power foes have not gone especially well during the Butch Jones Era, but surely that pendulum swings back in our favor at some point. We don’t know a whole lot about this version of the Horned Frogs. The QB is a transfer from Harvard and the defensive secondary is a game of Guess Who, especially with standout Bud Clark now playing for the Seahawks. This isn’t the 2022 TCU Horned Frogs.
Still, this isn’t the 1999 Horned Frogs, too. Butch Jones will need to play 60 minutes of hard-nosed football, and there’s no reason Red Wolves fans should expect it.
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