Cincinnati Bearcats Football Keys To The Game: TCU Horned Frogs

CINCINNATI — The 2025 Cincinnati Bearcats football regular season concludes on Saturday afternoon in a road matchup with the TCU Horned Frogs. UC kicks off the game at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX and will have to win as betting underdogs in a road environment for the first time this season to end the campaign on a high note.

The two schools are 2-2 against one another entering the contest, with Cincinnati ranked 41st in ESPN's SP+, while TCU is 46th.

Both teams are trying to finish the regular season 8-4 and are in a strong position to earn a good bowl bid next Sunday.

“I think it's huge. Eight sounds a lot better than seven," Uc head coach Scott Satterfield said this week. "As you head into signing day on Wednesday, and then as we're starting to gather names for the portal, I think that's huge, too. The better you can do win-wise, it's going to help. Playing on the road against a really good TCU team and getting another win, that'd be awesome. It says a lot about our program; it says a lot about our guys' resiliency. We have dropped the last three, and all three of those teams are really good teams.

"This team is good too, so here's another great opportunity. We didn't finish the last few, so how can we go out, finish these games, and get this win? I think it also gets the bad taste out of your mouth. As you head into the off-season, bowl season, winning is just so much better, as you head throughout December and the bowl game too, as you’re headed to the offseason.”

Offensive Key To The Game: Find Some Clock Control

Cincinnati should have a chance to wrangle control of the game flow in a rare instance this season. UC's offense and defense have combined to put a ton of snaps on the shoulders of that latter unit, and the cumulative wear really showed last week in the 26-14 loss to BYU.

UC is now firmly last nationally in time of possession by nearly four minutes, and all those snaps have stacked up on defense. Now, they face a TCU team that's bad at ball control as well (117th in T.O.P.). It would help UC a lot if they could make the pass game an extension of the run game, win the time battle, and help its gassed defense with fewer snaps.

TCU brings a much less daunting defense than BYU into this game, and they are obviously prone to long drives (105th nationally in quality drive rate allowed). They have given up consistently high completion rates all season and rank just 85th nationally in passing success rate allowed.

Brendan Sorsby likely can access 35-40 attempts in this game and tap into underneath routes to stay in manageable distances to the sticks. Teams have gotten TCU into a lot of short late-down scenarios, and Cincinnati should be willing to attack on fourth down and be aggressive. There's nothing to really lose long-term by being aggressive (TCU is outside the top 80 nationally in third and fourth down conversions allowed).

The Horned Frogs also may not have star safety Bud Clark for this game on a defense that already allows a high 9.32-yard average depth of target (124th). That plays right into Cincinnati's aggressive passing (9.83 aDOT, 16th nationally).

Earlier in the week, I was more adamant that the ground game had to respond to win here, but if Sorsby can shoulder one more heavy passing workload to every level of the defense, then that's the strongest upset path. TCU is 13th nationally in EPA/rush allowed and sixth in missed tackle rate.

Throwing the ball up and over the top of those strengths is huge.

Defensive Key To The Game: Turnover Josh Hoover

If the Bearcats can buck their rough turnover trends, they will win on Saturday. Josh Hoover's passed pretty well as the TCU quarterback this season (71.7 ESPN QBR, 31st nationally), but he's turning the ball over like a pastry artist.

His 13 interceptions are second-most in the country this season, and TCU is -1 on the season turnover margin as a result (76th nationally). Now, that's not been an issue against this Bearcats defense that has just nine forced TOs overall and only two interceptions.

TCU isn't elite at holding onto the ball either (five lost fumbles), so Cincinnati has to be ready to capitalize on these live balls.

“He's a talented quarterback. He is a true passer. Last year, I think he broke the school record at TCU, and he's had another fine season this year," Satterfield said about Hoover. "He can make all the throws, deep throws, your deep out routes to the field. He puts pressure on you because of that. I think he’s very competitive, I think he's an outstanding quarterback, and has been ever since he’s been playing. Last year, we did a pretty good job of containing him. He's an outstanding quarterback. He's another one in this league that we knew was going to be good, and he's going to be hard to contain defensively.”

The secondary has to ballhawk here to give Cincinnati's offense some extra chances and help themselves get a breather off the field as well.

Hoover passes a ton, with the 10th-most dropbacks among qualified FBS QBs, but also has a high PFF turnover-worthy play rate (10th highest at 4.8%), so he's not just throwing those picks because of high volume.

Add in leading rusher Kevorian Barnes being out for TCU, and you get an offense that may pass more than it has all season so far. Cincinnati cannot let him exit the day with a clean showing.

Prediction: 28-27 Bearcats

Season Prediction Record: 9-2

All advanced stats via CFBGraphs.com

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