At the 10:43 mark of the third quarter of TCU’s Sept. 15 game with Ohio State, it seemed the Horned Frogs and quarterback Shawn Robinson were on top of the world. Behind their talented sophomore quarterback, the 15th-ranked Frogs had just taken a 21-13 lead over the No. 4 Buckeyes and seemed in position to win the game and announce themselves as a real Big 12 and national title threat.
Turns out, that was the peak of the Shawn Robinson era at TCU.
Robinson threw a pick-six to Ohio State defensive lineman Dre’Mont Jones later in the quarter, turning TCU’s 21-19 lead into a 26-21 deficit, and it was pretty much all downhill from there. The Frogs never re-gained the lead in that game, losing 40-28, and Robinson would turn the ball over three times in a 31-16 loss at Texas the following week.
TCU would recover to beat Iowa State the week after that, overcoming two Robinson turnovers in a 17-14 win. After a bye, Robinson turned the ball over three times in a 17-14 loss to Texas Tech.
After an ineffective start against Oklahoma, Robinson was pulled in favor of Penn transfer Mike Collins, and Gary Patterson announced the following Monday Robinson would miss the rest of the season after undergoing surgery. As far as TCU was concerned, that turned out to be a career-ending surgery, as Jeremy Clark of HornedFrogBlitz reported Sunday that Robinson will seek a transfer.
Clark says Robinson will be on the NCAA’s transfer portal by Monday.
The transfer is a stunning end to Robinson’s TCU career, though not necessarily a surprising one.
He played at three different Dallas-Fort Worth area high schools before settling at DeSoto High School as a senior, where he led the Eagles to a 16-0 state championship, the program’s first. Robinson arrived at TCU as one of the school’s most heralded recruits of the Patterson-era and certainly the most highly-regarded quarterback. A consensus 4-star, he was listed as the Class of 2017 No. 6 dual threat quarterback.
Robinson flashed that dual-threat ability as Kenny Hill‘s backup in 2017, throwing for 184 yards and three touchdowns while carrying 23 times for 159 yards in three games. After beating out Collins to win the starting job ahead of this season, Robinson again showcased lots of natural talent, but his 9-to-8 touchdown-to-interception ratio and his 6.5 yards per attempt on 204 passes showed he still has a ways to go figuring out college defenses.
And now it appears he intends to do that figuring out somewhere other than TCU.