PurpleMenace.com All-Patterson Era Team (2001-2015)
In celebration of Gary Patterson’s first 15 years as Head Coach at TCU, we decided to have a poll to determine the All-Patterson Team. There were so many great players at TCU in the Patterson era and it was fun to reminisce about some of the players from the early years through last season. We had a ton of positive feedback from the poll over 1,500 responses in just one week, so without further ado, here is the PurpleMenace.com All-Patterson Team.
Voting was extremely close at multiple positions on Offense, but Andy Dalton edged Trevone Boykin for the First Team nod by garnering 53% of the votes. Marshall Newhouse (43%) held off Halapoulivaati Vaitai (35%) at Tackle, The Rose Bowl Team was well represented on the Offensive Line with Kyle Dooley at Guard, Marcus Cannon at Tackle and Jake Kirkpatrick at Center. Shae Reagan passed Matt Schobel at Tight End on the final day of voting and won by just two votes. Josh Doctson was the most voted for player on offense, gathering 96.8% of votes at Wide Receiver, where he is joined by Josh Boyce and Jeremy Kerley. Gary Patterson is known for his defenses, but man, there are some really good players who have been on the offensive side of the ball in his tenure.
The staple since Gary Patterson has been at TCU is his 4-2-5 defense. His teams were and are still known for their hard hitting mentality and speed. The hardest part about putting this team together wasn’t even the voting process, but just limiting which players were even up at each position. Safety was highly contested and Tejay Johnson beat Stephen Hodge by a single vote in the final hour of voting. I would be ecstatic to have any combination of these Linebackers start for TCU now and the fans spoke loudly with Tank Carder and Paul Dawson as the two starters. At Defensive End Jerry Hughes (92%) and Bo Schobel (54%) lead the pass rushing charge while the starting Peach Bowl duo of Davion Pierson and Chucky Hunter clog the middle at Defensive End. Cornerback was led by a pair of Jason’s. The most voted for player, Jason Verrett, who captured 96.8% of the votes and the teams best ball-hawk with 14 interceptions, Jason Goss.
Gary Patterson always talks about field position and flipping the field so any good Patterson team needs a solid Special Teams foundation. This unit didn’t disappoint either, led by the Big 12’s All-Time leading scorer, Jaden Oberkrom as the kicker. You had a pair of Super Bowl winning Deep Snapper’s to choose from and Clint Gresham beat out Jared Retkofsky for the First-Team slot. Doing the punting was the big left leg of Joey Biasatti and his 41 yard average. All of the return men on the list struck fear into opposing kickers and punters every time they kicked it away and with good reason, each one of these guys could take one to the house at any given moment. I know when I watched I always felt that BJ Catalon or Greg McCoy could return a kick for a TD or Jeremy Kerley would shake someone out of their shoes with a big punt return.
Like I said earlier, this was a really fun exercise and it shows which players really stuck out in the fan’s minds. The Offense definitely had a Rose-colored tint to it, featuring nine players from the Rose Bowl team, which is arguably the best offensive unit in TCU history. The Defense is a very diverse group ranging throughout Patterson’s tenure but does have five Peach Bowl participants on the First Team And finally, the Special teams group had a pair of Rose Bowl return specialists, a Peach Bowl kicker and kick returner and a Fiesta Bowl long snapper. I guess one of the side notes from all of this is that Gary Patterson has just been winning. We got to look back at a great group of players who played for a great coach. By looking at these polls and voting we got to remember that Gary Patterson has won in three different conferences (Conference USA, Mountain West, and Big 12) and been to two BCS Bowls (2009 Fiesta, 2010 Rose) and a New Year’s Six Bowl (2014 Peach). I hope you enjoyed the PurpleMenace.com All-Patterson Team. Let’s revisit this in another five year’s and see what’s changed.