It really is interesting examining some of the recent history for the Texas Tech Red Raiders. Just about any year you look at over the past couple of decades is full of points. The Red Raiders have routinely produced some of the best, most productive offenses in college football.
And of course they’ve also allowed other teams to have really impressive offensive outings as well.
Texas Tech, even in years that the offense isn’t as good as it probably should be, is still typically putting up points. So, as we examine some seasons in which the Red Raiders didn’t have “great” offenses, we can still acknowledge that they’re better at scoring points than a lot of other programs that same season.
The 2011 Texas Tech football team is a pretty good example of this. The Red Raiders, in this season, scored at least 40 points in six games. That’s good. Unfortunately, the Red Raiders had a very real issue scoring consistently in the second half of the season.
And Texas Tech really had issues stopping opponents. And that combination is going to lead to losses.
Texas Tech football history: The Red Raiders had a productive offense for the first half of 2011, but not the second half
We can talk about the defensive deficiencies for the 2011 team another time (and we almost certainly will sooner rather than later). Right now, I’m examining offensive stats and highlighting those.
Let’s take a look at how the 2011 Red Raiders were good but far from great on the offensive side of things.
In 2011, under Tommy Tuberville, the Red Raiders managed to average 33.8 points per game (not bad) along with 470.6 total yards of offense per game (also not bad). But TTU really didn’t have anyone that could help Seth Doege out in a significant way when Eric Stephens went out with an injury.
Doege, a 4000 yard passer, had 28 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He needed someone to help him out a bit when it came to getting Tech into the endzone. And Stephens did that. In the early part of the season, he managed to average 113 rushing yards per game and he scored eight rushing touchdowns. Unfortunately, that was only for five games.
And Stephens getting injured really derailed this offense. After winning its first four games, Tech went and lost seven of the next eight.