This fall, the Texas Tech football team will need to win these three games if the Red Raiders hope to return to a bowl game.
Most Texas Tech football fans can remember a time when qualifying for a bowl game was a foregone conclusion. In fact, until the Red Raiders missed out on postseason play by going 5-7 in 2011, they were the only Big 12 program to be bowl eligible in every year of the conference’s existence.
But the Red Raiders have since struggled just to reach a 13th game. Beginning in 2011, Tech has made it to a wobble just four times in eight seasons and has only been to a bowl in back-to-back seasons once (2012-13).
And unfortunately, Tech is not predicted by many to get back to a bowl this year. Most expect the first season of the Matt Wells era to be a bit of a retrenching year during which a roster that is rather low on overall depth will have to overachieve if the Red Raiders are to be a real factor in the Big 12. While those that do forsee Tech returning to the postseason believe that it will be by the slimmest of margins.
College Football News puts Tech’s 2019 win total at six. That would be a decent start for Wells but keeping in mind that each of the previous four Red Raider head coaches (Kliff Kingsbury, Mike Leach, Spike Dykes, David McWilliams) have all won ate least six games, it will likely take more than just barely stumbling into the postseason to get the fanbase truly excited.
With that said, a 6-6 regular season should be the minimum expectation for Tech fans, regardless of what those outside the program may think. But that will not be easy, especially given that the Red Raiders will have road games against two teams expected to be in the top-10 nationally to start the season (OU and Texas) and because Tech will have six home games against Power 5 teams as opposed to four such games at Jones Stadium.
But though the past decade of Texas Tech football has been somewhere between mediocre and poor, there remain expectations of success throughout the program and a losing season in year-one of the Wells era would not get the new coaching staff off to a great start (especially considering that Wells was not the popular choice to replace Kliff Kingsbury). So with that in mind, let’s take a look at three games the Red Raiders can ill-afford to lose if they hope to make it to a bowl game in 2019.