TCU Tries to Halt Late Slide at Houston

Unlike TCU, Houston head coach Willie Fritz has the Cougars heading in the right direction in his second season. After a 2024 campaign that saw the team go 4-8 — with wins over the Frogs and a ranked Kansas State squad sprinkled in — the Cougars have completely flipped the script. They are 8-2 and have a shot at competing for a conference championship. Now that’s impressive.

A big reason for that is Fritz’s winning track record. He has won everywhere he has coached, from Blinn Junior College — where he won two national titles — to his previous stop at Tulane. Wherever Fritz goes, winning football follows.

That’s what made his hiring at Houston such a slam dunk. While he isn’t a flashy name, he’s someone who gets the job done, and that’s all that matters in college football at the end of the day.

The Cougars Have Skated By

Houston has thrived in close games — the Cougars are 4-0 in one-score affairs — so Saturday’s contest could be a potential nail-biter.

The Cougars have required walk-off field goals in two games this season: one against Oregon State on the road in overtime and the other against Arizona a month ago. There’s an argument that Houston is simply getting lucky, but there’s also reason to believe the team just knows how to get it done when the lights are shining brightest.

For TCU, that’s fairly scary. The Frogs have continuously struggled in major moments — the recent loss against Iowa State comes to mind — and bucking that trend might be a monumental task for a team that can’t seem to get out of its own way.

TCU’s Got Some Road Woes

There’s no denying the Frogs have not played their best football away from Fort Worth. Three of the team’s four losses have come on the road, and one of their worst performances of the season — the 23-17 victory against West Virginia — also occurred outside Amon G. Carter Stadium.

If one extrapolates the trend to previous seasons, the road woes get even worse. TCU struggled to beat a terrible Stanford squad last season in the opening game. It also got routed by SMU a couple of weeks later in what remains one of the most embarrassing defeats in the history of the Iron Skillet. Additionally, Baylor took down TCU in Waco at the beginning of November last season, marking one of the few times over the past decade-plus that the Bears have gotten the best of the Frogs. TCU did pick up road wins against Utah and Cincinnati in 2024, though neither team was of high quality.

It gets worse if one looks all the way back to 2023. That season was a mess in many regards, and a major reason for that was TCU’s inability to win away from home — the team went 1-4 on the road.

All told, if TCU is to pick up the pieces and find a way to temporarily put an end to the negativity surrounding the program, it will have to do something it has struggled to do for the better part of three seasons. Yikes.

TCU’s journey toward making this season less of a failure continues Saturday afternoon in Houston at TDECU Stadium at 3 p.m. CT. The game will be televised on FOX. 

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