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What are Carolina’s advantages, if any, over TCU?
Well, the Tar Heels are playing at home, where a capacity crowd at Kenan Stadium will be rowdy and ready for the opening game, which has to be the most anticipated in program history.
And there is Bill Belichick, whose presence stalking the home sideline has to mean something as far as preparing a virtually unknown roster. His coaching staff has plenty of TCU tape to watch in preparation for this game. So that’s good.
It is also good the Horned Frogs aren’t looking at tape on the Tar Heels or even their few returning players because it is a whole new team and scheme. That will change with future foes Charlotte, Richmond and Central Florida having something to see and study.
Among TCU’s multiple advantages is as an established program that won nine games last year and was in the four-team College Football Playoff in 2022. Won’t the Frogs be fired up to play and try to beat the infamous Hoodie?
From a personnel standpoint, TCU has veteran players and a lot of them back from last year’s 9-4 team, “They play from sideline to sideline,” Belichick said Wednesday in his first pre-game presser.
Josh Hoover is a proven quarterback who turned down Tennessee to keep flinging in his home state under an offensive coordinator who has a story of his own. Kendal Briles is the son of offensive guru Art Briles, who coached Kendal at Houston and was his boss at Baylor for nine seasons. Kendal’s first season as a play caller was in 2015, which ended with a 49-38 win over 10th-ranked Carolina in the Russell Athletic Bowl, where the Bears set a record for that bowl with 756 yards of total offense that included 645 yards rushing by four tailbacks who took the place of two injured quarterbacks.
TCU is Briles’ sixth school as offensive coordinator, and he likely won’t have to resort to any trickery against the Tar Heels. Hoover, a 6-2 junior, set the school record last year with 3,949 yards passing and tied Andy Dalton for the fourth most touchdown passes (27).
Head coach Sonny Dykes called his fate another case of “bad scheduling” because TCU opened the 2023 season with a loss against Colorado and its celebrity coach Deion Sanders. “Not sure how we pulled that off again,” Dykes joked.
In his fourth year running the TCU program, Dykes said of that opener against the Buffaloes, “We didn’t handle all the hype. I’ve got to do a better job of getting our team more focused on just playing a football game than worrying about who we’re going to play against.”
Dykes said his staff has been watching a lot of tape on the New England Patriots from Belichick’s heyday in the NFL. And some of the University of Washington last season, where Steve Belichick made the Huskies’ defense a whole lot better.
Featured image via Associated Press/LM Otero
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
