Was BYU ill-prepared for Josh Hoover? Or did TCU find Max Duggan’s replacement?

Fort Worth, Texas • Signs of TCU’s past life were all over Amon G. Carter Stadium on Saturday.

The 2023 national championship game banner was plastered across the second deck railing. The “hypnotoad” that galvanized and captured the absurdity of the Horned Frogs’ Cinderella run last year made an appearance on the jumbotron. Fans rushed into Fort Worth donning No. 15 jerseys with former quarterback Max Duggan’s name pressed on the back.

Before last Saturday, it was all nostalgia without any current excitement. Because the product TCU had put out this season was 3-3, far removed from anything that resembled that championship game run a year ago.

After Saturday? BYU allowed TCU to get that current juice back. Mainly, the hope that Sonny Dykes found Duggan’s replacement in backup quarterback Josh Hoover.

Making his first collegiate start, Hoover carved up BYU for 439 yards, four touchdowns and a passer rating of 143. He had two interceptions, but they were almost inconsequential in a game he otherwise orchestrated.

The question is, how much of that Hoover and how much was that BYU? Two things can be true: Hoover was brilliant, but the Cougar defense looked entirely unprepared for a quarterback making his real college debut.

“I thought he made some throws that I was not expecting,” BYU head coach Kalani Sitake admitted. “But they put him in a position where he could have success and he delivered.”

TCU certainly gave Hoover the leeway to put up big numbers. Dykes asked Hoover to throw it 58 times against BYU. That is 17 more times that he’s ever allowed previous starter Chandler Morris to drop back.

And that was part of the issue for the Cougars. Coming in, BYU figured a TCU team without Morris would run the ball. It had an all-conference running back in Emani Bailey too, not a bad second option.

Plus, the Horned Frogs were averaging just over 31 pass attempts with a starter. Why would that increase?

“We were expecting them to kind of run that ball with a new quarterback in there,” linebacker AJ Vongphachanh said.

But there was no reason to run it when Hoover was getting anything he wanted through the air. He finished 37-of-58 and connected with 13 different receivers.

Which brings us to another issue: Most of Hoover’s receivers were wide open. He sliced BYU’s defense with intermediate passes. He was 11-of-15 passing for 158 yards on throws 10-to-15 yards out. It was a clinic in getting the ball out and without much resistance.

Was BYU prepared for that, not expecting TCU to trust the accuracy of its freshman quarterback?

“It was more about the stuff they were getting underneath. That requires a quarterback with a lot of accuracy,” Sitake said. “This guy threaded the needle quite a bit on us. Man, I was really impressed with him.”

Not to mention BYU had no success getting to Hoover when he dropped back. He was kept clean on 53 of his 58 passing attempts.

“We didn’t make things even difficult on him,” Sitake admitted. “We didn’t pressure him and get to him and make things uncomfortable. It just goes to show, give that guy time and he can really hurt you. Hats off to him.”

BYU didn’t have much film on Hoover before this. He had 19 pass attempts the week before at Iowa State. He was 11-of-19 with 119 yards, a touchdown and an interception. He looked nothing like the quarterback BYU saw. But part of that is to be expected.

“Looking at what Hoover did last week, those were probably plays built more for Morris,” Sitake assessed. “This week, I think they just utilized his talents. … Maybe they didn’t do things completely different. Or changed the whole playbook. But they highlighted his strengths for sure.”

After the game, Sitake remarked that TCU looked more like “the team last year” with Hoover in the game. It is why this wasn’t all on BYU. Hoover was good enough to raise the ceiling of a middling TCU team this year.

But it also wasn’t without assistance from a disappointing BYU performance. And that is what Sitake will need to fix.

“This is going to be a different type of TCU team from here on out,” Sitake said. “You could kind of sense that. We need to make that same type of improvement from now until we take the field.”