By Jason Beauchamp

Published Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009 | 1:08 p.m.

Updated Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009 | 1:09 p.m.

Starting with last weekend's win at New Mexico, I'd been enjoying it, but I guess that was over on Sunday. We enjoyed having no practice and being able to enjoy your teammates, because we all had dinner together. It was fun and it was nice, but this week is a lot bigger than last week to myself and I know to the rest of this team.

This is the reason why you play college football. It's a great opportunity.

As for TCU's big win at BYU last weekend, it didn't surprise me.

TCU, they were predicted to run the Mountain West this year, and that's what they're doing . They have tons of speed, and you can't teach speed.

So that was the difference, I think.

Talking a bit on TCU standout defensive end Jerry Hughes, he's a great rusher. I've been watching him a lot.

He's very aggressive. I kind of in some ways emulate a lot of his rushes. I like the way he rushes. There's a lot of talk about him being one of the first defensive players drafted this April, so he's a guy to watch.

I'll be excited to be competing on the same field as him. And, in a way, I'll be competing against him. If I have a chance to, I'm gonna try to have as many sacks as him or even beat him.

We know that they're pretty heavily favored by most people in this game.

I don't think that it affects us at this point in the season. None of this season has really been what we expected it to be, so that's just one more thing to prove wrong to people.

You kind of expect that when they're in the position they are and we're in the position we are as far as just how they look at things. I expected it, and we all expected it. As long as we stay strong as a team, I don't think it should affect us.

I know I'll be playing healthy for the second week in a row.

I think it's extremely important for us to stay healthy and to have guys just keep their heads up mentally. For myself and the defense, I think I've seen that we're staying healthy. I think the team overall is pretty healthy right now, so it's not a huge concern.

Look forward to seeing you all when we're back at Sam Boyd Stadium on Nov. 7.