Texas Tech football: Best debut seasons by a Red Raider head coach
Mike Leach 2000: 7-6
Much like we don’t know just what we will see from Matt Wells’ initial Red Raider team this fall, not many people knew what to expect from Mike Leach’s 2000 squad. Taking over for Dykes, Leach brought a revolutionary passing attack and a quirky personality to Lubbock where he turned in a respectable 7-6 debut season.
That year, Tech was dominant against bad teams and dominated by good ones. The Red Raiders got off to a 4-0 start with home wins over New Mexico, North Texas, Utah State, and Louisiana-Lafayette by a combined score of 101-26. But Tech would win just three more games the rest of the way winning at home against Baylor and Oklahoma State and on the road at Kansas.
On the other hand, four of Tech’s six losses that year came against ranked teams. Tech lost to No. 1 Oklahoma, No. 1 Nebraska, No. 10 Kansas State and No. 20 Texas with all but the KSU game being decided by at least 12 points. Tech also fell to Texas A&M that year 33-15 at Kyle Field.
Still, the Red Raiders were able to get to a bowl game. The problem is that they were throttled by East Carolina in the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl 40-27.
Leach was the fourth first-year Red Raider head coach to reach a bowl and the third to lose that game. But more importantly, he was able to put his radical new “Air Raid” offense in place setting up the foundation of what would be a passing game revolution in college football.
Much like Leach, Wells is expected to bring about some significant changes on the offensive side of the ball this season. In fact, many believe that the “Air Raid” era of Tech football is over.
That’s because new offensive coordinator David Yost prefers to run a balanced scheme. In fact, he ran the ball more last year at Utah State than he threw it. But given that Tech’s best asset this year will be QB Alan Bowman, we might still expect Tech to rely more heavily on the passing game.
However, Wells is going to utilize a true tight end and run the ball out of the spread and between the tackles far more than we have seen in the last two decades. And perhaps it is time for a new philosophy as the rest of the nation has caught up to Tech’s spread attack in recent years. Back in 2000, Mike Leach was able to get to a bowl game while installing a new offense and hopefully, Wells can do the same this season as he attempts to bring a physical ground game back to Lubbock.