Texas Tech football: What we learned about defense, depth and Duffey from TCU game
The Texas Tech football team put together one of the most gritty efforts in the “Air Raid” era in its 17-14 win over TCU on Thursday night. Here are three lessons we learned from that performance including important revelations about the defense, team depth and Jett Duffey.
Football is unique in that each game takes on such importance. Every week brings new revelations born from blood and battle played out over a handful of gut-wrenching hours
For instance, look at how the view of virtually every Big 12 team changes from week-to-week. Just over 48 hours ago, the world saw West Virginia as a potential national title contender, Iowa State as a program suck in neutral and Kansas State as a team in turmoil headed for a disastrous season thanks to the predicament surrounding its head coach.
Not to mention, prior to Thursday’s game in Ft. Worth, many viewed the Texas Tech defense as soft and vulnerable. Likewise, the prevailing thought was that Kingsbury was an inferior in-game coach who could not match wits with the genius of Gary Patterson.
But after another chapter has been penned, we see the Big12 race differently. West Virginia is seen as a paper tiger that was never truly a top-10 caliber team. After struggling with Baylor, Texas looks far less the part of the imposing and dominant force that it had been built up to be by national pundits following its win over Oklahoma.
Behind the emergence of freshman QB Brock Purdy, Iowa State once again has the respect of the entire Big 12 as Texas Tech fans have already begun to worry about the Red Raiders’ trip to Ames in two weeks.
Meanwhile, questions and doubts are beginning to envelop two of the Big 12’s most entrenched coaches in Gary Patterson and Mike Gundy. And of course, Gundy’s perils come because of a loss to Bill Snyder’s KSU team as the Wizard once again pulled another rabbit out of his hat.
And so spins the Big 12 merry-go-round where each week reads like an episode of Game of Thrones when anything can happen and even the mightiest can fall. Fortunately for Texas Tech football fans, the Red Raiders emerged from the latest Big 12 slugfest as a program on the rise.
Despite a wave of injuries on the offensive side of the ball, Tech found a way to come up with a huge win over an in-state rival. As a result, the future seems bright for the Red Raiders and their head coach Kilff Kingsbury.
The team’s fourth win of the season provided some invaluable insight about the defense, the team’s depth and backup QB Jett Duffey. Let’s take a closer look at what we learned about the Texas Tech football program this week.