Some of you were elated to see a night game in the Jones, on Halloween, wearing throwbacks, honoring Pat Mahomes, etc. If you were, congratulations. You're a normal, highly-functioning person that doesn't believe in dogma or witchcraft or anything of the sort.
For the rest of you, the hair stood up a little bit on your neck when you saw that it was going to be a night game. More anxiety developed when you learned Mahomes would be getting inducted into the ring of honor. But then last night, when the epic all-black throwbacks were revealed, you resigned yourself to defeat. You submitted to this feeling of impending doom about the game.
Butt fumbles. Abortion tipped passes in the end zone. Allowing 480 yards rushing. Playing Vinny Testeverde's son at QB. Jett Duffey fumbling 4x in the red zone while single-handedly clogging up our Title IX office with complaints of foul acts on Broadway. In your mind, something f*cked up was going to happen.
I understand why you feel that way.
This exact moment for Tech football over the last few years -- the big-time hyped up game at home, at night, in throwbacks, the game we really want as fans, and must win later in the year to have a succesful season, etc. -- that game, usually results in multiple swift kicks to the dick for Tech fans. And a mass exodus of freshman students leaving the stadium early in the second half, resigned to a life of half-ass fanmanship.
But I'm here to tell you that it's a new era.
We have a competent Power Five defense. Like real competent. Multiple guys that other teams wish they had, badly. A defense chocked full of mercenaries from the transfer portal. Guys with massive chips on their shoulder. A lot of them can really play.
We have a new coaching staff. This staff gives a strong impression of knowing what it's doing. No one in the country is increasing their % of winning the game like we are on 4th down. It's a hell of an advantage.
Our offense's tempo differentiates our team from everyone in the country -- and it's a problem for defenses.
Baylor also isn't that good. Turns out, losing a lot of NFL players will make your team worse the following year.
I'm 4-0 in Lubbock in my last 4 home games. Were big underdogs or small favorites in all of 'em. And dominated the majority of those games. The Decade of Suck and Despair is over. It's obvious. You don't need to sacrifice your first-born son or anything to offset the evil that lingered around this place over the last 10+ years.
This game will be decided on the field - no bad juju. This will be about our players v. their players -- our scheme v. their scheme.
And I really don't know what to think on that front. While we are totally different teams in many ways -- personnel-wise to go with drastically different schemes on both sides of the ball -- this feels like as evenly-matched of a game that we will play all year.
A win would sure mean a lot, though. Anytime we line up against another school from Texas that gets most of its self-worth from talking shit about Texas Tech... those games just hit different. These are the ones I want to win real bad.
We also recruit against these guys. I promise you that there is a direct relationship between The Rise of Baylor Football & The Decade of Suck for Texas Tech. (There also appears to be a correlation between Baylor athletic success & murder coverups and the systematic raping of co-eds, but that's unrelated to this post). I betcha' this coaching staff wants to win this one, badly.
I don't know why, because it's going to be tough, but I think we hold up against their run game. We make Shapen try to do things he's not capable of doing, like dropping back and throwing on teams that know he's throwing it.
I think Behren Morton plays a good game, even though it's only his third start, and he's kinda due to turn the ball over 4 times in a game or something. In all seriousness, I am a little worried about our offense. Baylor has been really good against the run and at defending horizontal passing stuff. If they shut both of those things down and are able to get pressure on Behren when we try to move the ball in other ways, things could spiral out of control pretty quickly.
But I'm not predicting that happens. I believe the offensive surge we've seen over the last two weeks keeps on that same trajectory, which means scoring into the 30s against a defense that has been susceptible downfield through the air this year. Their secondary is young. It's nowhere near as good as ours.
Plus, playing at night in the Jones means something again. We're going to win this game.
Prediction:
Texas Tech 30
Baylor 27
This post is brought to you by From Here It's Podible, or FHIP for short.
FHIP -- while not the best Tech sports podcast (hell, it's not even top 30) -- is the only podcast in the world dedicated to Redraidersports subscribers. All other podcasts (which are way better than FHIP) are for your average, run-of-the-mill Tech sports fans. They can be found for free on youtube or anywhere on the interwebz. Those podcasts are for the peasants. Not FHIP. FHIP is made for you by people like you. The hosts watch all the football games and approximately 1/3rd of the basketball games.
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