Why Texas Tech football hasn’t seen recruiting bump under Matt Wells

Wells’ staff does not have deep ties to Texas

One way new coaches have tried to offset the impact of the new recruiting calendar is by putting together a coaching staff that has deep ties to the school’s primary recruiting areas.  By doing so, a coach can rely on his assistants to work the relationships they have been cultivating with recruits and their high school programs to help lure top talent even when the head coach may be unfamiliar to high school prospects.

We saw this first hand last fall when Kansas hired former Texas Tech receivers coach Emmett Jones to be part of Les Miles’ first coaching staff.  Jones, the former head coach at South Oak Cliff High School in Dallas, has deep ties to the talent-laden Dallas-area high school scene and as a result has become one of the Big 12’s top recruiters.  And already, he has won a number of high-profile recruiting battles against his former school, including 4-star defensive end Stephen Parker, a SOC High School product who was born in Lubbock and was a long-time Texas Tech verbal commit.

At Baylor, Rhule followed a similar model when he took over in the fall of 2016.  As part of his initial staff, he hired Cedar Hill head coach Joey McGuire, the president of the Texas High School Coaches Association and San Antonio Regan head coach David Wetzel and Shawn Bell, the head coach of Cedar Ridge High School in Round Rock.

But Wells has taken a different approach by filling out his staff entirely with college assistants, the vast majority of whom were with him at Utah State last year.  And of those coaches, special teams coach Mark Tommerdahl, defensive coordinator Keith Patterson, receivers coach Joel Filani, defensive line coach Paul Randolph and tight ends coach Luke Wells are the only coaches that have ever coached in Texas at any point in their careers.

What’s more, those five coaches have combined for just 12 years’ experience in Texas.  Other coaches on the staff have recruited Texas heavily, including OC David Yost and safeties coach Kerry Cooks but to suggest that this staff has anywhere near the type of ties to the Lone Star State that the staffs at rival schools have would be a stretch.

That’s why we’ve seen the Red Raider coaches barnstorming across Texas to meet with seemingly every high school coaching staff that will open their doors, regardless of the size of the school or if that program currently has any players Tech is interested in.  But it will take time for this staff to cultivate those relationships well enough for them to yield results and expecting a significant return on this investment to happen in just eight months is foolish.

Wells made the decision to prioritize experienced college coaches over gambling on high school coaches that could be ace recruiters and that could yield positive results in helping the players already on the roster maximize their potential.

And at some point, this staff will be more ingrained in the Texas recruiting scene and the foundation they are laying with the coaches in the state will likely pay off.  But the staff’s relative lack of ties to Texas means that results on the recruiting front aren’t likely to be as immediate as many would have hoped.