TCU shocked the college football world during the 2022 season when Horned Frogs ran the table in year one under head coach Sonny Dykes and rode a 6-1 record in one-possession games to the national championship. The dream became a nightmare against No. 1 Georgia but the Frogs accomplished what many thought could not be done — play for the national championship without having a roster loaded with blue-chip recruits. The Big 12 program made this run just a year after a losing season.
The Frogs finished the 2021 campaign with a 5-7 record in the final season under long-time head coach Gary Patterson. TCU had four losses by at least 19 points over the last seven games. Things were not going well in Fort Worth. Landyn Watson was a member of both teams.
The new Kentucky linebacker sees similarities between the TCU team that stunned college football and the current team in Lexington.
“I hope they’ll see that we’ve taken big strides from last year,” Watson told the media on Friday when asked what fans could expect to see from the 2025 Kentucky team. “Now I wasn’t here on the team last year but I’ve also been on a team that went 6-7, had a losing season, and then turned around and went to a national championship. So I can just tell that guys on the defensive side of the ball are dialed in. They don’t want to have a repeat of last year.”
Landyn Watson is not the first player or coach to say that Kentucky is looking to avoid the same fate as last year’s team even if the schedule is just as difficult. Mark Stoops has tinkered with the program’s offseason training program and had a full spring practice for the first time in at least a couple of years. The entire team and coaching staff has also participated in new team-building exercises as this program tries to reboot its culture that seemingly collapsed last season.
Watson and many others believe that culture change will lead to better results on the field once the fall arrives. That is specifically what happened at TCU.
“Really just the culture — the culture change. Our team was a lot more self-led,” Watson said about the drastic change at TCU. “We had a lot of older guys, a lot of leaders, helping the young guys. Once you get everybody pulling their weight, everybody on the same goal, it kind of makes things easier.”
Kentucky seems to be making a concerted effort about putting the team first and is returning to the program’s “blue collar” roots. Big turnarounds have happened in college football before and will happen again in the future. UK will be hoping to pull off something similar to TCU.
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