The Horned Frogs’ defensive team wrapped up Spring football with an overpowering performance during TCU’s Frogapalooza event on Saturday, April 27.

The team’s offensive and defensive units faced each other on 17 drives, but only four touchdowns were scored by the offense despite starting at the 30-yard line or closer in 11 of those drives.

The strong defensive effort also resulted in a safety, an interception and multiple stops on third down and at the goal line.

With a new defensive coordinator, former Boise State head coach Andy Avalos, big changes were expected and are apparent so far.

The Horned Frogs ran a 3-3-5 defense under former defensive coordinator Joe Gillespie, but have now shifted to a versatile scheme that often rushes four or more players and varies alignment to confuse opposing offenses.

“I feel like the new defense adds a lot of variety. We’re not as one dimensional and can really switch up the scheme with whatever offense we go against,” said defensive tackle Caleb Fox.

Aside from the deceitful looks from the front seven, the defense played a lot of man-to-man coverage from the secondary during the scrimmage.

The offense attempted to exploit these looks by throwing four goal-line fade routes, but were unsuccessful.

It was a frustrating day for the offense, but there were still some bright spots for this unit.

They were able to score touchdowns on three consecutive drives early in the scrimmage, execute an amazing fake field goal play and experiment with different personnel and alignments from skill position players.

On their drives going out from the two-yard line, the offense used two tight ends attached to the line of scrimmage to run the ball on early downs and create space to operate.

They also used a pre-snap motions or lined up their wide receivers in “bunch” splits on at least one play in every drive of the afternoon.

“When it comes to bunching up the formation or really spreading it out, those are some things we’ll be able to do in year two of this offense,” said head coach Sonny Dykes.

“We’re going to have a lot more versatility offensively going into next year,” he added.

The scrimmage wrapped up this year’s Spring Football episode for the Horned Frogs, as the countdown to the college football season continues.

TCU opens the 2024 season on the road against Stanford on Aug. 30, 2024.