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Why most Texas Tech football fans really don’t want Matt Wells

By Matthew Conner

LAS VEGAS, NV - NOVEMBER 09: Head coach Matt Wells of the Utah State Aggies watches his team warm up before their game against the UNLV Rebels at Sam Boyd Stadium on November 9, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Utah State won 28-24. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
LAS VEGAS, NV - NOVEMBER 09: Head coach Matt Wells of the Utah State Aggies watches his team warm up before their game against the UNLV Rebels at Sam Boyd Stadium on November 9, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Utah State won 28-24. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Loren Orr/Getty Images)
(Photo by Loren Orr/Getty Images) /

Wells has not been dominant at Utah State

Wednesday, Wells was named the Mountain West Conference coach of the year.  But that is not enough to impress Texas Tech fans who look at the his previous five seasons with the Aggies and are less than inspired.

Overall, Utah State has gone 44-34 under Wells in six seasons.  He has led the team to four bowl games (more than any coach in program history) winning two.

But if this year’s 10-2 record is viewed as an anomaly and one looks at his other five seasons, his record is pedestrian at best.  From 2013-17, Wells led the Aggies to a record of 34-32. That is a winning percentage of just 51%, which is not significantly better than Kingsbury’s 46% success rate.

And like Kingsbury, Wells has had some poor seasons at his first head coaching job. Prior to this season, Utah State had a run of three-consecutive losing seasons, a stat that certainly sounds familiar to Red Raider fans.  After all, one of the main bullet points used against Kingsbury was his three-consecutive losing seasons from 2016-18.

It is fair to ask why Hocutt would fire one coach after three-straight losing seasons only to replace him with a coach just one year removed from the same streak of futility.  And in 2016, Wells’ team was just 3-9 despite playing in the MWC, which is not a Power 5 conference.  Meanwhile, the fewest wins Kingsbury ever posted in a season was the four Tech won in 2014.

It is hard to blame the Red Raider fans that are skeptical about turning their program over to a coach who just one season ago was thought by some to be on the hot seat.   Two of his three winning seasons came in his first two years on the job when he took over a program that had been to two-consecutive bowl games and had won a conference title the year before he was promoted from offensive coordinator to head coach.

There are other coaches at non-Power 5 schools with more impressive resumes.  In four years with Troy, Neal Brown has a 34-16 record and in three seasons at North Texas, Seth Littrell has an overall mark of 23-16 including back-to-back 9-win seasons.

But still, Hocutt is mulling over whether to hire a coach with a record of just 3-23 against winning teams in the past three seasons.  It is easy to see how that might alarm quite a few Red Raider fans.

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