FORT WORTH, Texas — Max Duggan tried to get through the crunch on the field, but every TCU fan wanted a piece of him.

They wanted to touch his shoulder pads or his red hair, to thank him, to take a picture with him. So many pictures. Adults, students, children. One fan asked Duggan to pose for a picture in front of the scoreboard, and the quarterback held his arms out, basking in the victory and the scene.

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TCU 43, Oklahoma State 40 in double overtime, the scoreboard read.

It was the second-largest crowd in the history of Amon G. Carter Stadium, and it felt like all 49,594 were on the field. As Duggan pushed his way through a mob on the field, a police officer stayed behind, just in case. ESPN’s Molly McGrath somehow found Duggan in the mass and conducted a postgame interview. Then he kept walking, kept squeezing through people, kept stopping for pictures before he finally made it to the sideline and found the person he was looking for.

It was Sam, Duggan’s brother, one of two siblings born in South Korea and adopted by Jim and Deb Duggan before Max was born. Sam had tears in his eyes as he crouched atop the sideline wall and embraced his brother.

“Nothing ever gets to him,” an emotional Sam told The Athletic. “He deserves this.”

Duggan started each of the past three years. Two months ago, he was told he’d lost the job. After spring practice, summer workouts and preseason camp, head coach Sonny Dykes and the new staff chose Chandler Morris as the starter. Duggan had started 29 games, but TCU began to fall from its perch in college football, with a 13-16 record in his starts, and he took the blame from fans for inconsistent play. It looked like the end of the road.

Now here was Duggan, the prince of Fort Worth, having led TCU to three consecutive wins against ranked opponents for the first time in school history. Everyone wanted a glimpse of him.

“That’s the reason you stay here,” Duggan said after the game.

One week later, Duggan led another comeback for another win against a ranked team, 38-28 against Kansas State, erasing a 28-10 deficit. A record 6,512 students were in attendance, more than half the student body.

TCU’s No. 7 ranking in the AP poll is its highest since 2017. The Horned Frogs are the third team ever to win four consecutive games against opponents ranked at the time of the game in a calendar month. Picked seventh in the Big 12’s preseason media poll, they’re in sole possession of first place heading into Saturday’s game at West Virginia.

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It all starts with Duggan, an unlikely Heisman Trophy contender who’s fourth in The Athletic’s staff straw poll. He ranks seventh nationally with an average of 9.7 yards per pass attempt. He’s totaled 23 touchdowns with just one interception. He’s made quicker and sharper decisions, leading a TCU offense that is third nationally in averaging 44.7 points per game.

“He’s persevered through a lot of different things,” said his father, Jim Duggan. “A lot of good things and some things that have set him back. He never gave up and he stayed the course. Things are paying off now.”

Earlier this season, after TCU’s 42-34 win at SMU, Frogs head coach Sonny Dykes teared up when talking about Duggan, the quarterback he’d benched but needed again in Week 1 when Morris injured his knee.

“I’m probably as proud of Max as any player I’ve been around,” the coach said in September. “… He never had a bad practice. He never pouted. He never thought of himself one time. How many people can you truly say that about? I’m kind of emotional about it, honestly.

“He’s the way you’d want your son to handle that situation.”

Duggan’s story is an outlier in modern college football. He’s not a hotshot youngster, an overlooked player or a veteran who just waited for his chance. He’s a former blue-chip recruit who started for four years and simply got better.

He was highly recruited out of Council Bluffs, Iowa, a four-star prospect and top-ranked player in the state while playing for his dad at Lewis Central High School. Notre Dame wanted him. So did a lot of Big Ten and SEC schools.

When college coaches visited the family on recruiting trips and saw Max and his Korean siblings, Jim would joke that Max was the adopted one. Jim and Deb had a hard time conceiving a child, and Deb believed they should adopt internationally. Sam was first, and the experience went so well so quickly that they then adopted Megan.

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“And lo and behold, here comes Max,” Jim said.

When Max was a kid getting into football, Jim placed him on a youth team with less talented-players players to challenge him. Jim remembers Max being “mad as hell,” but it was a way to establish the youth program.

“In the third and fourth grade, you don’t understand it,” Max said. “But you get used to it and I see the lessons today, adversity and playing with your back against the wall. You learn from those situations.”

Sam, six years older, played quarterback for Jim at Lewis Central. When Max began high school and got in the same position, Sam helped. The two frequently communicate about football. When Max graduated, Jim retired from coaching.

“What motivates me is proving right their support and confidence in me,” Max said of his family.

He chose TCU because of then-offensive coordinator Sonny Cumbie and the opportunity to play in a major city.

“One of his priorities was to be at a school in a big metropolitan area,” Jim said. “He didn’t want a small college town. He got to Fort Worth, looked around campus and everything around TCU really hit home with him.”

Duggan didn’t expect to play as a freshman, but he became the starter entering the third game, making him only the second true freshman QB to start for Gary Patterson. He admits now he probably wasn’t ready to handle all of it. He didn’t throw an interception in his first 143 career pass attempts and he beat Texas, but it was an up-and-down season. TCU went 5-7, just the third time in 22 years the Horned Frogs missed a bowl game.

The next year, a summer COVID-19 test revealed Duggan had a heart defect since birth known as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. It was a scary moment for the Duggan family as Max went from being the young star quarterback to seeing his future in question. Jim has a family friend who is a cardiologist in Houston who took care of Max and put the family at ease. He underwent heart surgery to repair it and again needed surgery when a blood clot appeared, but he recovered and joined the team early in the season. It was another lesson.

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“It’s not taking anything for granted,” Max said. “Being with the guys in the locker room again, being able to play college football, it’s special and I’m grateful for it.”

TCU went 6-4 in Duggan’s sophomore year but had to cancel its bowl game when a COVID-19 outbreak hit the team. As a junior, Duggan battled a foot injury and started 3-5 before Patterson was fired as head coach. It’s not often a coach with a statue on campus is asked to step away, but the program had begun to slip. And Morris, then a redshirt freshman who’d transferred to TCU from Oklahoma, began to look good, throwing for 461 yards in an upset win against Baylor, the first game without Patterson. Morris was injured a week later and Duggan returned for a win against Kansas.

“I better not hear anything bad about Max Duggan!” Patterson tweeted after the game. “He didn’t have surgery to help TCU win when others turned it down!”

But TCU finished 5-7, missing another bowl game. Dykes was hired from SMU and Duggan knew it would be an open quarterback battle. Many fans wanted Morris, believing he had a higher ceiling and that Duggan had hit his.

Before the first game, Dykes and offensive coordinator Garrett Riley informed Duggan that Morris would be the starter. They told Duggan he’d still be involved in the game plans. He knew what it meant.

“My dad’s a coach, so I understood those conversations, telling you how it is and that’s about it,” Duggan said.

There was a brief period when Duggan could have jumped into the transfer portal. Even after the NCAA added transfer windows, Duggan could have decided to sit out the season and save a year of eligibility. He and his father had long conversations about his options. Duggan wanted to stick around and graduate from business school. They believed things would work out.

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He moved forward and got another chance when Morris was injured in the opener against Colorado. This time, Duggan hasn’t let the starting job slip away. He’s become the quarterback everyone envisioned coming out of high school, leading the Horned Frogs to a season no one expected. He’s still taking his share of big hits, including one late in regulation against Oklahoma State that briefly knocked him out of the game, and then more against Kansas State. His running ability opens him up to those hits, but he hasn’t backed down.

“When you see your team leader is tough like that, it’s a confidence boost for everybody,” tight end Jared Wiley said. “He’ll stick in there and make big plays, take a shot. His running adds another element to our game. It’s a boost knowing how tough he is.”

The big season has boosted Duggan’s NFL Draft stock, which wasn’t very high coming into the year. He’s a four-year starter but has another year of eligibility thanks to the COVID-19 waiver. Duggan said he won’t think about his future until after the season.

He’s focusing on a moment he thought he’d lost a few times. TCU stuck with him and he stuck with TCU. Now anything feels possible.

“I did feel responsible for how we played the last three years, and I understood you only go as far as your quarterback,” Duggan said. “But you have to be secure in yourself and know you can take criticism. That’s what a leader does, take blame from others that don’t deserve it. Help guys get better and get through the process.

“Be that leader for guys to look to and look upon.”

(Top photo: Tim Heitman / USA Today)