Texas Tech Football: Five reasons for optimism in 2018
Entering the 2018 Texas Tech football season, there is more uncertainty about this year’s team than there has been about any team in quite some time. But there is also reason for optimism and here are five reasons to believe that this year will be a step in the right direction for the program.
What can we expect from this year’s Texas Tech football team? One might as well flip a coin to decide because looking at the preseason prognostications will provide little consensus.
Some see Tech as a dark horse Big 12 contender while others think just making a bowl game will be a struggle. That is because we have not seen a Red Raider team like assembled this way since perhaps the Spike Dykes era of the late 1990’s.
For two decades, counting on Texas Tech to have one of the most productive quarterbacks in the nation has been as wise as counting on the wind to blow off of the Caprock. But this year, there is no such certainty as the Red Raiders must figure out if any of the three inexperienced and extremely flawed quarterbacks on the roster will be able to produce at a Big 12 level.
But while the offense has now become a worry, the defense has now become the rock to which Texas Tech fans are clinging in what feels like a college football bizarro world. Tech returns 10 starters from a defense that improved 25 spots in total defense last year and forced the sixth-most turnovers in the nation.
Three Red Raider defenders were named to the preseason all-Big 12 team, more than any other program in the conference could boast. So what are we to make of such an unusual Texas Tech football team?
No one knows for sure, and that is what makes tomorrow’s opener against a dangerous Ole Miss team so intriguing. That and the fact that the season begins with a real test rather than a sacrificial slaughtering of an FCS lamb.
But while this team is odd in its composition, it could be oddly effective on the field. Here are five reasons that for optimism about the 2018 season.