With the end of four weeks of spring practice comes TCU’s annual Spring Game on Saturday, and head coach Gary Patterson said the team is ready to hit hard.
“They haven’t hit since Tuesday, by Saturday I think you’ll see them go after each other,” Patterson said.
For the first time since Patterson has been with TCU, the team took all four weeks of spring practice in a row instead of two two-week sessions with a break in between, he said.
The four weeks of continuous spring practice experiment has had its good points and bad, Patterson said, but he’d be more happy with the results if fewer players had gone down with injuries.
“Maybe I’ll need to change it around a little bit, but I thought we got the young people that we needed to grow up. I thought we got better at some positions,” he said.
On the plus side, Patterson said, none of the injuries have been major, except for a broken foot suffered by Jeff Olson, a redshirt freshman offensive tackle.
The team has been spending practice preparing specifically for its different opponents, Patterson said.
“We’ve been working on some read stuff for Air Force, Utah and Wyoming,” he said. “We worked on Oklahoma – some two back, two tight end stuff and offensively we’re going to blitz them.”
Spring training has given the team a few positive surprises, he said. Running back Chris Smith gives the team another big back to work alongside Joseph Turner and Aaron Brown. Tight ends Logan Brock and Evan Frosch have been developing well and should help with the teams multiple tight-end sets, he said.
Patterson said the Spring Game is a big deal, but is more of a preview of the team, with every player getting a chance to play.
The scrimmage will feature first-team offense on first-team defense and third team on third team.
Patterson said the second-team players will compete in first-team lineups, because so many players will be resting with injury.
The game will take place in two eight-minute halves, and quarterbacks will be redshirted.
Mark Cohen, director of athletics media relations, said players were not being made available for interviews.
