Texas Tech football: Ranking the defensive position groups for 2019
The 2019 Texas Tech football season will likely hinge on how effective the defense can be. So let’s take a look at how the position groups rank heading into Matt Wells’ first year.
Throughout history, man has undergone legendary quests for mythical treasures. For centuries, explorers have searched for the fountain of youth or the lost city of gold only to spend their lives seeking in vain. And the Texas Tech football program has its own version of that type of legendary and fruitless hunt, the quest for defense.
Since Mike Leach first brought the “Air Raid” offense to Lubbock in 2000, Tech football has been on a never-ending crusade to field a defense that could complement the program’s elite offense. But that treasure has proven as elusive as finding Big Foot, capturing the Loch Ness Monster, or contacting extraterrestrial life.
In the last two decades Greg McMackin, Lyle Setencich, Ruffin McNeil, James Willis, Chad Glascow, Art Kaufman, Matt Wallersteadt, Mike Smith, and David Gibbs have all taken their shot at bringing defense back to the South Plains. But none of these defensive coordinators were able to fix the program’s ails on that side of the ball.
Some like McNeil and Kaufman came close but had their time in Lubbock cut short by a head coaching change that prevented them from completely changing the defensive culture. Others like Glascow, Wallersteadt, and Willis were not retained because of off-field issues that ranged from mere personality conflicts (Glascow) to domestic violence charges (Willis) to allegedly showing up to work intoxicated (Wallersteadt). The rest simply were not competent enough to get the job done.
Last season, the Red Raider defense was once again one of the worst statistical units in the country. Tech ranked 108th in total defense, giving up 449 yards per, 128th in pass defense (283 yards per game), and 86th in scoring defense (31.1 points per game).
What’s more, five times in 2018, Tech gave up at least 40 points. That continued a frustrating trend that developed during the Kingsbury era as the defense continually cost the Red Raiders in games when the offense did more than enough to prevail.
In all, 22 of Kingsbury’s 40 losses as head coach of the Red Raiders came when his team scored 30 points or more. That included seven losses when Tech reached the 40-point mark and four when the Red Raiders put up 50 points or more.
Therefore, it was no surprise to hear new head coach Matt Wells talk extensively about instilling a commitment to defense in his new program when he was at last week’s Big 12 media days. But there’s reason to wonder if his defensive coordinator Keith Patterson will have any greater success than his predecessors.
We recently discussed Patterson’s struggles when coordinating Power 5 defenses, which is a reason many fans (myself included) are skeptical about a real defensive turnaround. That’s because it is hard to have tremendous faith in a man who when at Arizona State produced the nation’s second-worst defense in 2016 and was demoted for one-time Baylor defensive coordinator Phil Bennett, who Red Raider fans have little regard for as a defensive mastermind.
This isn’t to suggest that the 2019 defense will be as helpless as the 2016 unit that finished last nationally in total defense. There are some talented players and quality position groups set to take the field on that side of the ball for Patterson this year. So let’s rank the defensive position groups from strongest to weakest to get a better look at what we might expect from the side of the ball that has long made Texas Tech hide their eyes in fear.