Greg McElroy forecasts championship game loss hangover for TCU

TCU stole several of the headlines from a season ago by breaking through with their best finish as a Power Five program in Sonny Dykes’ first year. Even so, Greg McElroy doesn’t see the Horned Frogs succeeding in a similar way in his second run in Fort Worth.

McElroy was a little down on TCU for this season in an episode of ‘Always College Football’ last week. They are clearly still capable and talented but, to him, that only goes so far considering how many times that things managed to work out in their favor in some games last fall.

“I am a little bit down on TCU this year. Not to the point in which I think that they fall all the way back to 6-6. That feels like way too much for me,” said McElroy. “This team still has some talent. They did a great job in the portal, brought some guys in from difference-making programs where you have guys that are probably going to be able to help you immediately. But to be able to create the magic that they had last year? Where the ball always seemingly bounced their way? I think it’s going to be difficult to recreate.”

McElroy went on to admit that he did feel like a championship hangover is coming for the Horned Frogs. The way that they lost to Georgia in Los Angeles on the sport’s biggest stage is something that he doesn’t feel will be easy to recover from.

“To be honest with you, I do think there’s going to be a bit of a national championship hangover. That was a really bad performance. I think, if you played that game a hundred times, it wouldn’t get sideways like that again. I really don’t think it would have,” McElroy said. “They were their own worst enemy, they were totally shook by the time they got off the bus. The second they went through warmups and they looked at the other end of the field? They said, ‘Oh my goodness. We don’t look like that, we don’t have players that look like that’. They were never quite the same as evidenced by Max Duggan being inaccurate on his first third down throw.”

From there, though, McElroy added that he also isn’t big on TCU’s schedule doing them any favors. Besides being the opener for Deion Sanders at Colorado, he pointed out how they’ll also close their season by playing four of their conference’s best teams in the final five games.

“They have one of the toughest schedules in the Big 12. I mean last year? It was somewhat manageable. It was, obviously, the round-robin schedule,” explained McElroy. “This year? It’s not the round-robin schedule and they draw, arguably, the four best teams in the Big 12. You go to Kansas State, you go to Texas Tech. You have Texas at your place and then you go to Oklahoma.”

“Those four teams are, at worst, in the top half of the league as of right now. I would have all four of those teams in my preseason Top-25, or at least close to it,” McElroy said. “That’s going to be a difficult trek knowing three of those are on the road and the Texas Longhorns, who are the most talented team in the Big 12, are going to be there in Fort Worth.”

TCU bought plenty of goodwill with their run to the Big 12 Championship and College Football Playoff in 2022. However, in 2023, McElroy expects for life to be a little bit more difficult on the Horned Frogs.

“I think when you look at TCU? The height of their ceiling is still really high. But I just don’t know if they’re going to be able to scratch the surface of that ceiling,” McElroy said.

“It could be a slight step back for TCU. But it doesn’t change the perception of the program that has already been built under Sonny Dykes leadership up to this point.”