{"id":455197,"date":"2026-10-03T11:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T11:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/455197\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T11:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T11:02:15","slug":"byu-football-byu-eager-to-atone-for-past-failures-in-fort-worth-vs-tcu-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/455197\/","title":{"rendered":"BYU football: BYU eager to atone for past failures in Fort Worth vs. TCU \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

FORT WORTH, Texas \u2014 As No. 10 BYU has prepared the last two weeks<\/a> to put its undefeated season on the line against TCU on Saturday, coaches have delivered one history lesson after another to the 3-0 Cougars.<\/p>\n

Cougars on the air<\/p>\n

No. 10 BYU (3-0,1-0) at TCU (2-2, 0-1)<\/p>\n

Saturday, 5 p.m. MDTAt Amon G. Carter StadiumTV: ESPNRadio: 102.7 FM \/ 1160 AM<\/p>\n

Generally, BYU\u2019s experiences at Amon G. Carter Stadium have been forgettable, including three years ago when the Cougars were also coming off a bye week and facing a quarterback making his first career start, Josh Hoover. The redshirt freshman threw for 439 yards and four touchdowns and TCU welcomed BYU to the Big 12 with a 44-11 beatdown in front of 44,599 sun-drenched fans.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s weather conditions are expected to be quite different \u2014 forecasts call for a 75% chance for rain \u2014 and the teams are obviously a lot different. But BYU\u2019s offensive and defensive coordinators, Aaron Roderick and Kelly Poppinga, are warning the Cougars that the 2026 version of the Horned Frogs is fully capable of ruining BYU\u2019s perfect season.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor sure, yeah. I gave them a little history lesson today about just my experiences playing against TCU over the years,\u201d said Roderick, a former BYU receiver, Utah assistant coach, and now the Cougars\u2019 offensive coordinator. \u201cMan, they\u2019ve got a great tradition. They\u2019ve had great players and coaches there for years, and it is no different now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, they\u2019ve got a great tradition. They\u2019ve had great players and coaches there for years, and it is no different now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick on TCU<\/p>\n

The Frogs (2-2, 0-1) have plenty of motivation, after having been drubbed 44-13 by BYU last year in Provo. Coach Sonny Dykes\u2019 squad is coming off a sloppy and mistake-filled 21-13 loss at UCF<\/a> and is still searching for its first win over a Power Four opponent in 2026. Captains held a players-only meeting<\/a> on Monday in an attempt to right the ship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s just one step in the right direction,\u201d said quarterback Jaden Craig, a transfer from Harvard. \u201cWe\u2019re looking to come together as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

TCU\u2019s other loss was to North Carolina, 15-10, in Ireland. The Frogs walloped Grambling State 63-7 and Arkansas State 31-7 at home after the loss overseas.<\/p>\n

When BYU visits, however, TCU seems to take it up a notch.<\/p>\n

Since losing 31-17 to John Beck-led BYU in 2006 when it was nationally ranked, TCU has routed BYU three times at Amon G. Carter Stadium, and also took a 38-28 victory over the Cougars in 2011 in a nonconference game played at Cowboys Stadium in nearby Arlington. <\/p>\n

\u201cSince the (2006 game), they put it on us four games in a row down there,\u201d Poppinga said. \u201cSo we gotta go down there and play clean football. We have to win the turnover margin. We have to get turnovers. \u2026 We gotta win that battle, and we gotta stop the run. We have to play good in the red zone, and all those things on the road that are super important.\u201d<\/p>\n

The game could boil down to whether BYU can run the ball on TCU, which has one of the best rushing defenses in the country. The Frogs give up only 86 rushing yards per game, and 2.87 yards per carry. BYU is No. 9 in the country in rushing yards per game<\/a> (262.7) and are third in yards per carry (6.74) behind reigning Big 12 offensive player of the year LJ Martin.<\/p>\n

Poppinga said the Cougars\u2019 defense welcomes a wet weather game.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove it, man. Let\u2019s go. We love the elements,\u201d he said, when told there\u2019s a heavy possibility of rain in the Metroplex this weekend. \u201cWe were talking about it earlier. Like, yeah, give us everything you got. Give us a downpour, tornado, whatever. We\u2019ll play in any of the elements. We\u2019re excited about that opportunity. \u2026 If that happens, I think our guys will step up to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of greater concern to Poppinga is the way his defense has started in each of the past two games. Both Arizona and Colorado State scored touchdowns on their opening drives. Thousands of BYU fans will be in attendance Saturday, but BYU can\u2019t afford to fall behind early and allow an upset-hungry home crowd to rev up.<\/p>\n

In 2023, TCU\u2019s Millard Bradford intercepted BYU quarterback Kedon Slovis less than two minutes into the game and returned it 35 yards for a touchdown. Three minutes later, Hoover threw a 42-yard touchdown pass to JP Richardson, and BYU was cooked. TCU led 24-0 before the Cougars got on the board with a 3-yard Keelan Marion touchdown run late in the second quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like to play better in the first drives of the game, so that\u2019s been an emphasis, just making sure we start fast, start clean, get our cleats in the ground, get our eyes on the right spots, communicate, just do our job, and play football,\u201d Poppinga said. \u201cThat\u2019s really been my biggest emphasis because there have been flashes of us playing as good as I could remember us playing in the last three or four years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love the elements. … Like, yeah, give us everything you got. Give us a downpour, tornado, whatever. We\u2019ll play in any of the elements. We\u2019re excited about that opportunity. \u2026 If that happens, I think our guys will step up to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0BYU defensive coordinator Kelly Poppinga <\/p>\n

Offensively, the Cougars remember that they were coming off a bye week three years ago, and couldn\u2019t get anything going until midway through the second quarter. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am really confident in this team,\u201d Roderick said. \u201cIt is a different team, different time, and we got a lot of work in the past two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roderick acknowledged that running the ball on TCU\u2019s defense won\u2019t be easy. TCU\u2019s defensive coordinator is Andy Avalos, the former Boise State head coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have tons of respect for these guys. They have good players. Coach Avalos is a great coach. He\u2019s one of the best in the game, and he\u2019s got a really good staff. They\u2019re just a really well-coached team. So we have our work cut out for us, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the biggest, most physical and most athletic team we\u2019ve played yet this year,\u201d Roderick continued. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna have to go in there and be physical and be sound in what we do. It is gonna be a tough challenge, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

That game three years ago was played in the middle of the day; Saturday\u2019s game begins at 6 p.m. local time, which comes as good news to a team that is 14-1 in its last 15 night games<\/a> away from home.<\/p>\n

BYU coach Kalani Sitake is expecting an entirely different TCU team than the one that committed four turnovers and 11 penalties last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI anticipate them being a much better team than what we\u2019ve seen because I know what their coaches are capable of doing, and we know being at home can be a huge advantage,\u201d Sitake said. \u201cThe game time is going to work in our favor, I think, because we like to play in that time slot. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut overall, being on the road is not an easy thing. \u2026 I think our guys felt a little left out last week. I think the guys really wanted to play, and so there\u2019s a high level of anticipation and urgency to get to this game this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

And break the Fort Worth curse.<\/p>\n

\"\"BYU head coach Kalani Sitake, left, yells at an official, right, during the second half of an NCAA college football game against TCU, Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023, in Fort Worth, Texas. | LM Otero, Associated Press <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT WORTH, Texas \u2014 As No. 10 BYU has prepared the last two weeks to put its undefeated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,17092],"class_list":["post-455197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-news-feed-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}