TCU’s Max Duggan: The ‘college football nerd’ who could win the Heisman

FORT WORTH, Texas – Sonny Dykes checks all the boxes to win your various national coach of the year awards. He took over a TCU program that went 5-7 a year ago and transformed the Horned Frogs into a team with a 12-1 record, a No. 3 ranking and, most important, a berth in the College Football Playoff.

If Dykes puts a wing on his home for all his new trophies, if his ego gets too big for his britches, he always can remind himself that he’s also the coach who didn’t name Max Duggan the starting quarterback coming out of preseason practice.

That would be the same Max Duggan who Wednesday night accepted the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, who learns Thursday night if he will win the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award and on Saturday night will be in Manhattan to find out before a national TV audience if he is taking home the Heisman Trophy.

Duggan may end up with more hardware than Jabo’s Ace store over there in Westcliff, about a mile south of campus, and yet Dykes didn’t think he could start for the Frogs. While we’re at it, let’s throw offensive coordinator/quarterback coach Garrett Riley, the newly crowned Broyles Award winner as the nation’s best assistant, under the bus, too.

Dykes, unlike most guys in his profession, doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. He gets this joke. And as Dykes discussed the season just ended, he revealed something about quarterbacks, about college football and about Duggan himself.

It is Sunday morning, the morning after the Horned Frogs lost their first game of the season, a 31-28 heartbreaker of a loss to No. 10 Kansas State in overtime in the Big 12 Championship Game. Duggan didn’t play his best game, but whatever caused him to run hot and cold for three quarters went away in the last 12 minutes of regulation. With TCU trailing 28-17, Duggan willed the Frogs first to a 10-play drive to get a field goal, then on an eight-play, 80-drive for the tying touchdown and two-point conversion with 1:51 to play. On six of the eight plays, Duggan kept the ball and ran for 95 yards (an offensive pass interference penalty forced the Frogs to come up with an extra 15 yards).

“The problem with Max,” began Dykes, sitting in his office Sunday morning, “and it’s a great problem, you go watch his practice every day and you go, “Yeah, he’s all right.’ You just don’t see the stuff in practice because practice is a series of one plays. You evaluate somebody on a play. Max is not somebody you evaluate on a play.

“It’s like – I used to watch Kurt Warner back when they (the NFL Rams) were really good. You’d watch Kurt Warner, and you’d go, ‘Ugh.’ You evaluated him on a drive, or on a quarter, or on a half or on a game, you’d go, ‘Man, this guy’s got some kind of magic.’ I think Max Duggan is the same way.”

If Duggan is a magician, he’s not ready for Vegas, one of those showmen who wears a tuxedo as he makes an elephant disappear. He doesn’t appear particularly fast, but he has rushed for 404 yards and six touchdowns. You wouldn’t say he has a cannon where his right arm should be, and yet he’s thrown for 3,321 yards, 30 touchdowns and only four interceptions, and completed nearly two of every three (.649) passes.

Dykes compared Duggan to Warner, the grocery clerk turned Super Bowl-winning quarterback, and to Nick Foles, the backup turned Super Bowl winner whom Dykes tutored at Arizona.

“I don’t know what that is or how you say it or what the magic is,” Dykes said. “Other guys who have all the talent in the world lack that magic. Their one play is great! But that quarter is not that great, or that half is not that great, or that game is not that great, or that year is not that great. You know? I think all of us as coaches have a blind spot for that.”

Players aren’t so blind. Chandler Morris started TCU’s opener at Colorado. He got hurt late in the third quarter, with the Horned Frogs holding a 17-6 lead. Duggan came in on the first play of the fourth quarter. He ripped a 33-yard run and, Dykes said, nearly broke it.

“I remember our players (on the sideline) going, ‘That’s what he does! That’s who he is!’ ” Dykes said. “I remember kind of going, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting.’ There was just an energy and a confidence.”

Morris got Wally Pipped, and Duggan became Lou Gehrig. The Yankees’ great operated in the shadow of Babe Ruth and enjoyed the shade. Duggan is no extrovert either, a self-described “college football nerd” who is about as comfortable with recognition as he is with a six-man rush. He has learned to deal with both. Duggan may not yet be comfortable with recognition, and yet he goes in front of the camera and remains himself.

Witness his seven-minute news conference after the Kansas State loss Saturday. Duggan cried and occasionally sobbed his way through all seven minutes, a vivid illustration of what this game and this team means to him. Dykes brought up Tim Tebow’s speech after Florida’s loss to Ole Miss in 2008, when a tearful Tebow vowed that no one would fight harder for the rest of the Gators’ season than he.

Duggan didn’t write any verbal checks, but he left his coach gobsmacked, nonetheless.

“When was the last time you saw that in an NFL press conference?” Dykes asked. “That’s what makes college football special.”

On Sunday, Duggan described how the importance of this “surreal” season snuck up on him.

“We really didn’t think about it,” Duggan said Sunday after the CFP revealed that TCU would play No. 2 Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl. “We were playing it week by week, practice by practice. We know if we do the right stuff during the week, everything will take care of itself by the end of the year. And you know, we’re sitting here in this spot.”

Dykes may not have fully understood who his quarterback is on Labor Day weekend, but he’s got an idea now.

“We’re not going to have 30 draft picks, like some of these teams are,” Dykes said. “But I think it shows the power of the team. It’s the power of a guy like Max Duggan. You hang around that guy every day, it makes me want to be a better coach. I mean, truly.

“He’s a pretty special guy.”