The Texas Tech football team’s 2015 signing class proved to be an overall bust and was a huge reason that Kliff Kignsbury lost his job.
In the wake of Kliff Kingsbury’s firing, Texas Tech football fans have been looking back at his six-year run to figure out just where it all started to go wrong. Now, it is easy to see that one of the key factors that led to his downfall turned out to be the 2015 signing class.
When that group put pen to paper in February of 2015, many were pleased with the talent joining the program. 247Sports.com ranked the class No. 32 overall and third in the Big 12. It was by far the highest-rated class of the Kingsbury era.
The class had an average star ranking per recruit of 0.8579 which is higher than the 0.8400 average ranking of Kingsbury’s other five signing classes. What makes the 2015 class even more disappointing is that it featured four 4-star recruits, just one fewer than the total number of 4-star players Kingsbury signed in his other five classes at Texas Tech.
Overall, there were six offensive linemen, six wide receivers, three defensive backs, three defensive linemen, a running back, and a linebacker that singed with Tech that year. But of those 20 players, only eight were on the Texas Tech roster in 2018 with eleven either transferring, retiring from the game or being kicked off the team.
This group would have been seniors or redshirt juniors in 2018 and should have comprised the back bone of the team. But instead, the failure of the class left the team desperately thin which came back to haunt Kingsbury when this season’s injuries derailed what was once a promising season.
Only four members of the 2018 class were starters this year. Center Paul Stawarz started all but one game and was a steadying force in the middle of the line. As a three-year starter, the former JUCO transfer outperformed expectations when he signed as an unrated prospect that few fans knew anything about.
Two more 2018 offensive linemen starters, Terence Steele and Madison Akamnonu were 2015 signees. Steele started every game this year at right tackle, his third season to be a full-time starter at that spot. Likewise, Akamnonu appeared in all twelve games this year making ten starts at left guard but was demoted in November in favor of Jacob Hines only to get his spot back when Hines was lost with a knee injury.
Defensive tackle Broderick Washington was arguably the best defensive lineman on the roster in 2018. The junior, who was voted a team captain, finished the season with 39 tackles earning honorable mention All-Big 12 honors. A former high school offensive tackle who was just a low-rated three-star prospect when he signed in 2015 (most recruiting services listed him as an o-line prospect), he has turned himself into one of the most important players on the team and could be a potential NFL draft pick when his time at Tech is over.
But unfortunately, the rest of the 2015 class was not a factor in 2018. Let’s take at look at some of the huge misses in that class that ultimately may have cost Kliff Kignsbury his job.