1. First impressions aren’t always everything.
Texas Tech coughed up a 14-point lead with 13:27 left to play at Iowa State in Chris Beard’s first conference game. The Red Raider baseball team lost nine-straight at one point in Tim Tadlock’s first season, including a 10-3 loss to New Mexico, 15-2 and 12-2 losses to Kansas State and a 6-1 loss to Kansas. Mike Leach’s first game against a ranked opponent was a 56-3 home thrashing to Nebraska.
Kliff Kingsbury won his first Big 12 game, a 20-10 decision over a TCU team that began the season ranked No. 20 in the AP Top 25.
Tommy Tuberville’s first conference game as Texas Tech’s head coach featured a sixth-ranked Texas team fresh off an appearance in the national title game. The Red Raiders hung with the Longhorns, came back from an early 14-point deficit, competed for four quarters and ultimately came up just 10 points short. It was the kind of feel-good, moral-victory, future-is-bright loss that I’m sure many Red Raider fans were hoping for yesterday.
Texas Tech was not competitive against Oklahoma. The game was over at halftime, if not earlier. There are no positive takeaways from Saturday’s bloodbath, no brief glimmers of greatness to come. The team looked wide-eyed, hapless and, at times, Keystone Cops-esque. Matt Wells now owns the fourth-largest margin of defeat for a first-year head coach in program history*.
For as terrible as Saturday was, that single result is no more a definite sign of Wells’ future than Beard’s loss to Iowa State, Tadlock’s nine-game skid, Leach’s loss to Nebraska, Kingsbury’s win over TCU or Tuberville’s narrow defeat to Texas.
* Mike Leach (56-3 Nebraska, 2000), David McWilliams (61-11 Miami, 1986) and Rex Dockery (49-7 Arkansas, 1978).
2. Two questions heading into Week 6
What does the Texas Tech football team do well right now? The team’s defense showed marked improvement in the first three games, but it’s hard to feel good about anything on that side of the ball after Saturday’s performance. The offense wasn’t firing on all cylinders with Alan Bowman behind center, and those issues are magnified now with Bowman sidelined with an injury. Specialists Trey Wolff and Austin McNamara have been very good this season, but outside of the specialists there doesn’t seem to be any unit that the Red Raiders can count to consistently perform at a high level.
Will Wells and David Yost consider making changes in order to jump-start the Red Raider offense? I don’t presume to know the ins and outs of Yost’s scheme, nor do I know how much of the offense’s struggles over the last three games can be reasonably chalked up to some combination of poor execution, players still learning a new system and the team’s apparent lack of playmakers at the skill positions. No matter the reason, Texas Tech has scored five touchdowns in its last 10 quarters of football. That’s not what anyone expected, and everyone involved – you, me, the coaches, the players, everyone – knows those results aren’t going to be good enough if the Red Raiders still have designs on a bowl bid.
3. Three stats that help to explain the meltdown.
1. Texas Tech's team tackling grade of 27.9 against Oklahoma was the worst in the Big 12 this season and the program's second-lowest for a game since PFF started grading every college game in 2014. The only performance that graded-out worse was, ironically enough, the Red Raiders' loss to the Sooners in 2016 (27.7).
2. Jackson Tyner’s career completion percentage of 12.5 ranks 72nd out of the 73 players that have attempted at least eight passes in their Red Raider careers, according to Sports-Reference.com. Defensive back Bart Thomas, whose 0-for-8 passing mark was just about the only blight on his 1994 All-Southwest Conference season, ranks 73rd.
3. Texas Tech’s defense has allowed 10 touchdown drives in the last two games that spanned 70 or more yards. The team’s offense has managed to put together just two.
4. Four plays that sum up Saturday’s futility.
1. Texas Tech trails 7-0 early but its defense, which entered the afternoon with one of the Big 12’s best third-down defense, has the Sooners facing 3rd and 17 on their own 11-yard line. Jalen Hurts takes the snap, has all day to throw and throws it deep down-field to Charleston Rambo who is surrounded by three defenders. Rambo hauls in the pass, shrugs off Adam Beck’s hit and runs away from several Red Raiders before Zech McPhearson finally takes him down at the Texas Tech 15-yard line.
2. The Red Raiders are down 24-10. Jett Duffey has led the offense to scores on his first two drives of the day, and the team’s defense has stalled the Sooners’ attack around midfield and forced a 4th and 11 at the Texas Tech 41-yard line. Oklahoma keeps its offense on the field and easily converts with a dump-off pass to fullback Jeremiah Hall that gains 23 yards. Fun fact: 57 of Hall’s 100 career receiving yards have come on two catches against Texas Tech.
3. Texas Tech is trailing 41-13. The Red Raiders went three-and-out on their first drive of the second half but converted a Jalen Hurts interception into a field goal and seem to have a modicum of momentum. The defense forces a quick three-and-out on the Sooners’ ensuing drive as Hurts’ pass on 3rd and 3 falls incomplete. Someone on Texas Tech’s punt return team is called for offsides, giving Oklahoma a free first down. Five plays and four Trey Sermon runs later, the Sooners go up 48-13.
4. The very next drive, Texas Tech is trailing 48-13. The offense has put together one of its best drives of the afternoon, featuring a pair of third-down conversions and two chunk plays, and is facing 3rd and 10 from the Oklahoma 18-yard line. Duffey throws a beautiful pass to McLane Mannix in the corner of the endzone for his first touchdown pass of the season, but Dawson Deaton is flagged for being downfield. The Red Raiders fail to convert the ensuing 3rd and 15 situation and settle for a 41-yard field goal.
5. Five observations from Week 5.
… Saturday night, nearly 10 years exactly since his “fat little girlfriends” rant at Texas Tech, Mike Leach offered up a similar critique of his Washington State team following a 38-13 loss at Utah. I’m curious to see if the national reaction to “fat, dumb, happy and entitled” is different than it was for “fat little girlfriends.”
… What a snoozer of a college football weekend. Clemson’s sleep-walking win over North Carolina was one of just two one-possession wins by AP Top 25 teams on Saturday – three if you count Michigan State’s win over Indiana, where the Spartans scored a defensive touchdown as time expired – the rest cruised to victory. No matter how many times I flipped the channel, there just wasn’t much drama to be found.
… No one ever accused the Rutgers athletic department of being competent, but firing Chris Ash after a 1-3 start to his fourth season just reinforces that he should have been fired after his third. What does his 8-32 record tell you now that you didn’t know last December when he was 7-29?
… Kliff Kingsbury still has a better record against SEC teams (1-3) than Arkansas head coach Chad Morris (0-10).
… Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard had 25 carries for 296 yards and a score in the Pokes’ 26-13 win over Kansas State on Saturday. He will head into this weekend’s game against Texas Tech averaging 25.6 carries per game, which puts him on pace for 332 carries this season if the Cowboys qualify for a bowl game. That number would rank fourth all-time in Big 12 history behind Iowa State’s Troy Davis (402, 1996), Texas’ Ricky Williams (361, 1998) and Adrian Peterson (339, 2004).
Texas Tech coughed up a 14-point lead with 13:27 left to play at Iowa State in Chris Beard’s first conference game. The Red Raider baseball team lost nine-straight at one point in Tim Tadlock’s first season, including a 10-3 loss to New Mexico, 15-2 and 12-2 losses to Kansas State and a 6-1 loss to Kansas. Mike Leach’s first game against a ranked opponent was a 56-3 home thrashing to Nebraska.
Kliff Kingsbury won his first Big 12 game, a 20-10 decision over a TCU team that began the season ranked No. 20 in the AP Top 25.
Tommy Tuberville’s first conference game as Texas Tech’s head coach featured a sixth-ranked Texas team fresh off an appearance in the national title game. The Red Raiders hung with the Longhorns, came back from an early 14-point deficit, competed for four quarters and ultimately came up just 10 points short. It was the kind of feel-good, moral-victory, future-is-bright loss that I’m sure many Red Raider fans were hoping for yesterday.
Texas Tech was not competitive against Oklahoma. The game was over at halftime, if not earlier. There are no positive takeaways from Saturday’s bloodbath, no brief glimmers of greatness to come. The team looked wide-eyed, hapless and, at times, Keystone Cops-esque. Matt Wells now owns the fourth-largest margin of defeat for a first-year head coach in program history*.
For as terrible as Saturday was, that single result is no more a definite sign of Wells’ future than Beard’s loss to Iowa State, Tadlock’s nine-game skid, Leach’s loss to Nebraska, Kingsbury’s win over TCU or Tuberville’s narrow defeat to Texas.
* Mike Leach (56-3 Nebraska, 2000), David McWilliams (61-11 Miami, 1986) and Rex Dockery (49-7 Arkansas, 1978).
2. Two questions heading into Week 6
What does the Texas Tech football team do well right now? The team’s defense showed marked improvement in the first three games, but it’s hard to feel good about anything on that side of the ball after Saturday’s performance. The offense wasn’t firing on all cylinders with Alan Bowman behind center, and those issues are magnified now with Bowman sidelined with an injury. Specialists Trey Wolff and Austin McNamara have been very good this season, but outside of the specialists there doesn’t seem to be any unit that the Red Raiders can count to consistently perform at a high level.
Will Wells and David Yost consider making changes in order to jump-start the Red Raider offense? I don’t presume to know the ins and outs of Yost’s scheme, nor do I know how much of the offense’s struggles over the last three games can be reasonably chalked up to some combination of poor execution, players still learning a new system and the team’s apparent lack of playmakers at the skill positions. No matter the reason, Texas Tech has scored five touchdowns in its last 10 quarters of football. That’s not what anyone expected, and everyone involved – you, me, the coaches, the players, everyone – knows those results aren’t going to be good enough if the Red Raiders still have designs on a bowl bid.
3. Three stats that help to explain the meltdown.
1. Texas Tech's team tackling grade of 27.9 against Oklahoma was the worst in the Big 12 this season and the program's second-lowest for a game since PFF started grading every college game in 2014. The only performance that graded-out worse was, ironically enough, the Red Raiders' loss to the Sooners in 2016 (27.7).
2. Jackson Tyner’s career completion percentage of 12.5 ranks 72nd out of the 73 players that have attempted at least eight passes in their Red Raider careers, according to Sports-Reference.com. Defensive back Bart Thomas, whose 0-for-8 passing mark was just about the only blight on his 1994 All-Southwest Conference season, ranks 73rd.
3. Texas Tech’s defense has allowed 10 touchdown drives in the last two games that spanned 70 or more yards. The team’s offense has managed to put together just two.
4. Four plays that sum up Saturday’s futility.
1. Texas Tech trails 7-0 early but its defense, which entered the afternoon with one of the Big 12’s best third-down defense, has the Sooners facing 3rd and 17 on their own 11-yard line. Jalen Hurts takes the snap, has all day to throw and throws it deep down-field to Charleston Rambo who is surrounded by three defenders. Rambo hauls in the pass, shrugs off Adam Beck’s hit and runs away from several Red Raiders before Zech McPhearson finally takes him down at the Texas Tech 15-yard line.
2. The Red Raiders are down 24-10. Jett Duffey has led the offense to scores on his first two drives of the day, and the team’s defense has stalled the Sooners’ attack around midfield and forced a 4th and 11 at the Texas Tech 41-yard line. Oklahoma keeps its offense on the field and easily converts with a dump-off pass to fullback Jeremiah Hall that gains 23 yards. Fun fact: 57 of Hall’s 100 career receiving yards have come on two catches against Texas Tech.
3. Texas Tech is trailing 41-13. The Red Raiders went three-and-out on their first drive of the second half but converted a Jalen Hurts interception into a field goal and seem to have a modicum of momentum. The defense forces a quick three-and-out on the Sooners’ ensuing drive as Hurts’ pass on 3rd and 3 falls incomplete. Someone on Texas Tech’s punt return team is called for offsides, giving Oklahoma a free first down. Five plays and four Trey Sermon runs later, the Sooners go up 48-13.
4. The very next drive, Texas Tech is trailing 48-13. The offense has put together one of its best drives of the afternoon, featuring a pair of third-down conversions and two chunk plays, and is facing 3rd and 10 from the Oklahoma 18-yard line. Duffey throws a beautiful pass to McLane Mannix in the corner of the endzone for his first touchdown pass of the season, but Dawson Deaton is flagged for being downfield. The Red Raiders fail to convert the ensuing 3rd and 15 situation and settle for a 41-yard field goal.
5. Five observations from Week 5.
… Saturday night, nearly 10 years exactly since his “fat little girlfriends” rant at Texas Tech, Mike Leach offered up a similar critique of his Washington State team following a 38-13 loss at Utah. I’m curious to see if the national reaction to “fat, dumb, happy and entitled” is different than it was for “fat little girlfriends.”
… What a snoozer of a college football weekend. Clemson’s sleep-walking win over North Carolina was one of just two one-possession wins by AP Top 25 teams on Saturday – three if you count Michigan State’s win over Indiana, where the Spartans scored a defensive touchdown as time expired – the rest cruised to victory. No matter how many times I flipped the channel, there just wasn’t much drama to be found.
… No one ever accused the Rutgers athletic department of being competent, but firing Chris Ash after a 1-3 start to his fourth season just reinforces that he should have been fired after his third. What does his 8-32 record tell you now that you didn’t know last December when he was 7-29?
… Kliff Kingsbury still has a better record against SEC teams (1-3) than Arkansas head coach Chad Morris (0-10).
… Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard had 25 carries for 296 yards and a score in the Pokes’ 26-13 win over Kansas State on Saturday. He will head into this weekend’s game against Texas Tech averaging 25.6 carries per game, which puts him on pace for 332 carries this season if the Cowboys qualify for a bowl game. That number would rank fourth all-time in Big 12 history behind Iowa State’s Troy Davis (402, 1996), Texas’ Ricky Williams (361, 1998) and Adrian Peterson (339, 2004).
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