Former Michigan assistant Connor Stalions responded to claims made by TCU coach Sonny Dykes about the adjustments the Horned Frogs made in the 2022 College Football Playoff semi-final.
Stalions and Michigan were accused of running a sign-stealing operation during the 2022 season, but it did not prevent them from losing 51-45 to the Horned Frogs. TCU coach Sonny Dykes recently said his team had heard the rumors and changed their play calls for that game, which had been reported previously.
Stalions, however, was not leaning into that narrative. In a lengthy X post, he attributed the loss to TCU to poor tackling and blocking, and disputed that TCU’s changes did anything to throw him off.
“To say anyone ‘fooled’ me is admitting that you have no idea how signal deciphering & protecting works,” Stalions wrote. “No team has ever ‘changed’ signals — meaning they don’t recycle the same signal to have a different meaning because that would confuse the 18-year olds on the field more than it would confuse me. They simply create new signals. And if I see a new signal, I’m not guessing what it means.
“The continuous attempt to correlate signals to any wins & losses at Michigan is funny. There were 7 games in my time at Michigan where I knew almost every signal the whole game: 2021 MSU, 2022 MSU, 2022 PSU, 2022 OSU, 2022 TCU, 2021 Georgia, and 2021 Wisconsin. We lost 3 of those games because we didn’t tackle well, and Georgia was historically good. We won the four other games because we dominated the line of scrimmage & tackled well. Blocking, ball security, tackling, run fits & coverage tools. That’s football. This is not rocket science.”
To save everybody’s time so we can move on from the same recycled story from Coach Dykes, I’ll provide some more details and we can wrap this up:
— Connor Stalions (@cpstalions) July 12, 2025
We lost because we turned the ball over & had a poor game tackling. And TCU played well. Congratulations. The same way we won the…
Stalions has some interest in playing down whatever role he had in Michigan’s program. He would not want to do anything to cause others to question the legitimacy of the team’s success, especially since they went on to win a national title after his departure.
Stalions has denied breaking NCAA rules by scouting opponents in person before they faced Michigan. There is some reason to doubt that story, but the former Michigan staffer is sticking to it.
