Matt Wallersteadt
When taking a look at the individual mistakes Kingsbury made, perhaps none loom larger than his decision to hire Matt Wallersteadt as his first defensive coordinator in 2013. Coming over from Texas A&M, where he had coached linebackers, the exuberant Wallersteadt needed to bring some stability to a position that had become a turnstile in Lubbock.
By the time Wallersteadt arrived, there had been four different Texas Tech football defensive coordinators in the previous four seasons. And unfortunately, because of a rather strange situation that we may never fully know the truth about, that streak was about to be extended.
In 2014, Wallersteadt resigned just three games into the season. Reports surfaced that he had shown up to the team facility under the influence but those claims were never substantiated.
Why Kingsbury’s first defensive coordinator abruptly left the program is irrelevant. Whatever the reason, the damage was done. Tech finished the season with Mike Smith as interim DC and would hire Houston DC David Gibbs to run the defense in 2015.
That meant that from 2009, the final year of Mike Leach’s tenure, to 2016, Texas Tech went seven years before having the same defensive coordinator for two complete seasons. And as one might expect, the results were disastrous as the Red Raider defense became the laughing stock of the nation finishing second to last overall in 2015 and last in 2016 in total defense.
Though those seasons go on Gibbs’ ledger, the foundation for that futility was laid by the chaos surrounding the program in the two years prior to his arrival when Wallersteadt’s departure left the defense in shambles. Making matters even worse was the fact that those two years coincided with the final two years of the Pat Mahomes era.
Despite having the best quarterback in program history and a future NFL MVP leading the offense, the Red Raiders managed to go just 12-13 in Mahomes’ two full years as a starter. During that time, Tech lost five games in which Mahomes and the offense put up 45 points with four of those losses being 50-point efforts.
If Texas Tech would have had merely an average defense during the Mahomes era, there is reason to believe that the Red Raiders could have contended for a Big 12 title and we can only imagine how much of a positive impact that would have had on the program. And the reason the defense was so inept in those seasons was because of the failings of Matt Wallersteadt, who let Kingsbury and Texas Tech down by not being able to get through even two years as defensive coordinator.