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1. First things first…
Matt Wells is 1-0 in November as Texas Tech’s head coach.
That the Red Raiders beat a 3-6 team riding a healthy losing streak, and were in fact favored to win, is beyond the point. The Texas Tech football team took the field on a November afternoon and won. That’s your headline.
The month of November has held little but misery, heartache and anger for the Red Raiders in recent seasons.
Tommy Tuberville’s 2011 team needed just one November win to preserve the program’s bowl-eligibility streak and failed in four tries. The following season, Texas Tech rode into November with a 6-2 record and promptly lost at home to an average Texas team, squeaked by Kansas in overtime and lost to Oklahoma State and Baylor. Kliff Kingsbury was 6-17 in November in six seasons, including 0-for-November seasons in 2013 and 2018.
The result Saturday in Morgantown was notable, but the how is just as important.
Wells name-dropped six months by name during his introductory press conference last year. He pointed out that January, February, June and July – i.e. the offseason – is when teams and programs become tough. Wells also discussed how, in December of 2016 after a 3-9 season, he took a hard look at his staff, his process and philosophies to ensure he would never endure another season like that.
November was also mentioned.
“We’re going to run the football when we want to run it. We’ll be a physical running team. You cannot win games in the month of November in this league if you don’t run the football in November, OK? I promise you that.”
Texas Tech ran the ball 42 times for 127 yards and four touchdowns in Morgantown. It was not the Red Raiders’ most productive or efficient game on the ground. In fact, it was one of their worst. Nor did the team run the ball more on Saturday than it had previously this season. Texas Tech’s longest run of the day went for just 14 yards. Ta’Zhawn Henry and SaRodorick Thompson, together, averaged fewer than three yards per carry. Simply put, save for the four touchdowns, there is nothing spectacular or even uncommon about the team’s rushing numbers.
There were so many reasons for the Red Raiders to abandon the run game on Saturday. Henry and Thompson were the team’s only two scholarship running backs in Morgantown due to Armand Shyne’s season-ending rib injury, and Thompson missed the second half due to an injury. Jett Duffey, meanwhile, made quick work of the West Virginia secondary and had more than 200 passing yards after the first quarter. It would have been very easy for Wells and David Yost to pull back from the run, but they didn’t.
The result was Texas Tech’s first November win since 2017.
Last November, when Kingsbury had so many reasons to stick with the run game, he didn’t. The Red Raiders ran 27 times in a loss to Oklahoma, 33 times in a loss to Texas, 26 times in a loss to Kansas State and 30 times in a loss to Baylor.
Here’s guessing that Texas Tech’s win in Morgantown won’t prove to be a November anomaly under Wells.
2. Two questions heading into Week 12
… What is SaRodorick Thompson’s status? Texas Tech’s leading rusher left the game Saturday with an injury and did not return. With Shyne out for the season, and Henry the only other scholarship running back on the roster, Thompson’s availability for the TCU game is a major storyline to follow this week.
… How much will the Red Raiders’ big-play vulnerability hurt them against TCU and Kansas State? West Virginia entered Saturday with 20 completions of 20 or more yards in eight games. The Mountaineers had nine against Texas Tech. The Red Raiders have now allowed 45 such plays this season, the worst in the Big 12. This vulnerability did not sink them against the Mountaineers, but it could bite them against TCU or Kansas State.
3. Three notable stats
… Jett Duffey has not thrown an interception in his last 131 passing attempts, dating back to the fourth quarter of Texas Tech’s loss to Baylor. Here’s the list of every Red Raider starting quarterback that has gone three-straight Big 12 games without throwing an interception: Kliff Kingsbury, Graham Harrell, Jett Duffey.
… T.J. Vasher is Texas Tech’s leading receiver in catches (37), yards (473) and touchdowns (6) this season, but the numbers tell a different story if you focus solely on Big 12 play. Erik Ezukanma (313), RJ Turner (312) and Dalton Rigdon (247) have more yards in conference play, and Turner (25) and Ezukanma (21) have more catches.
… Texas Tech’s offensive line has allowed just 11 sacks this season on a Big 12-leading 390 pass attempts.
4. Four things that stand out after diving through the PFF numbers
… Here’s a question from a subscriber: What are Jett Duffey’s completion percentages at different points downfield? Duffey is completing 93.6 percent of his passes behind the line of scrimmage, 76.2 percent of his attempts 10-yards and in, 60.7 percent of his passes between 20 and 10 yards and 34.6 percent of his attempts 20-plus yards downfield.
… Duffey attempted just four passes outside of the numbers against West Virginia. The bulk of his passes this season have been between the numbers – roughly 66 percent – but Saturday was that trend on steroids.
… Zech McPhearson was easily Texas Tech’s highest-graded defensive back, as he posted a 78.2 coverage grade. DaMarcus Fields had the second-best coverage grade with 67.8.
… Jordyn Brooks (84.9), Doug Coleman (83.1), Thomas Leggett (80.8), Riko Jeffers (80.1) and Dadrion Taylor (79.6) earned high tackling grades. Adrian Frye (40.9), Jaylon Hutchings (28.0) and Alex Hogan (27.9) did not.
5. Five observations from Week 11
… The knock on Tom Herman has long been that his teams are great when they are overlooked and disappointing when they enter the season with big expectations. Even though they got a nice win over Kansas State on Saturday, it’s hard not to view this Texas season through that prism. The Longhorns could easily catch another loss or two in the coming weeks.
… Chad Morris won fewer conference games at Arkansas than Turner Gill won at Kansas. Big yikes. Arkansas really had no choice, as there is no recovering from losing home games to North Texas, San Jose State and Western Kentucky in less than two seasons. The tricky thing for the Razorbacks is that things can definitely get worse if they miss on this hire. No pressure.
… Speaking of Morris, he was part of a very active coaching carousel after the 2017 season. Willie Taggart was the first of that group to be fired, Morris was the second, and there were certainly be more. Looking back, for all the big names that came off the board that year – Chip Kelly, Scott Frost, Jimbo Fisher, Dan Mullen, Herm Edwards – Sonny Dykes (SMU) and Billy Napier (ULL) might have been the two best hires.
… If you’re a Texas Tech fan, you should on some level feel heartened by the fact that Minnesota and, yep, even Baylor (hear me out) are 9-0 and in contention for conference championships and major bowl games. If you look at the top 15 of this week’s AP Top 25, the programs that look the most like the Red Raiders are the Gophers and Bears. Minnesota hasn’t won a conference title since 1967, Baylor will never get top-billing in its home state, and neither program got to 9-0 by landing highly-ranked recruiting classes. The Gophers’ last five classes have ranked between No. 41 (2019) and No. 57 (2017) in the country. The Bears’ last five have ranked between No. 32 (2018) and No. 58 (2016) in the country. If it can be done in the Twin Cities and Waco, it can be done (again) in Lubbock.
… If I had a vote, here’s how I would rank the top five teams in the country: 1. LSU, 2. Ohio State, 3. Clemson, 4. Alabama, 5. Oregon
