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Patterson props up his Heisman candidate after imperfect opener
Trevone Boykin and Gary Patterson both know the Heimsan candidate quarterback didn't live up to expectations in TCU's season-opening win at Minnesota.
The senior quarterback who broke onto the national scene last season when it wasn't even certain he'd be the starter in 2014, still put together a winning performance on the road against team expected to challenge for a spot in the Big Ten championship game.
If Boykin wasn't perfect, he nor his coach is about to apologize for it. There's 11 more games in the regular season to set the hair of the Heiman voters, and the College Football Playoff committee, on fire.
“There are some really good players that I watched play this weekend, but I don’t think there’s any of them that compete any harder than he does,” Patterson said of Boykin during his Tuesday weekly press conference. “He took some shots. I mean, without him, we don’t win the Minnesota game.”
Yes, Boykin missed two open receivers that if thrown accurately likely would have resulted in touchdowns and TCU might have cruised to a victory and retained its No. 2 national ranking instead of dipping to No. 3. But Boykin was also 26-of-42 for 246 yards and a touchdown, good enough to move him into second place on TCU's all-time passing yards list behind Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton.
“Bottom line is, Trevone Boykin, he’s a great athlete, and he’s a competitor,” Patterson said. “Simple as that. We all want to be real critical of him, but the bottom line to it is that we ask him to do a lot of things. I think if anything, if he was guilty of anything, he tried to do too much. You just need to let the offense take care of itself. But I thought he did a great job.”
(h/t Star-Telegram)
