Saturday we looked at the best wins of Matt Wells’ time as head coach at Utah State so today, let’s look at the worst losses that the new Texas Tech football head coach has had in his career thus far.
We’ve all had awful days at work, days when nothing seemed to go according to plan. The goal, for everyone, is to try to minimize those instances so that the good days outweigh the bad. That’s true in the world of sports. Unfortunately, as Texas Tech football fans, we’ve seen far too many bad days in the last ten years as the program has fallen from its once lofty perch as a top-25 program to relative obscurity on the national scene.
In the last six years, 15 of the Red Raiders’ 40 defeats came by twenty points or more. That means that 37.5% of Kliff Kingsbury’s losses were absolute blowouts in which almost nothing seemed to go as planned.
The worst of those losses was 2016’s 66-10 loss at Iowa State. In that game, Pat Mahomes was proven to be human as he went just 18-36 for 219 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception.
Though 2014’s loss at TCU was not quite as big, seeing the Frogs run Tech out of the building by a score of 82-27 was one of the most humiliating days in Tech history. It is one thing to lose by 55 points to an in-state rival, but seeing that rival get into the 80s only adds insult to injury. And if you recall that game (an no one would blame you if you’ve tried to forget it), TCU took its foot off the gas in the 4th quarter. If they had not, the Frogs could have hung 100 on Tech that day.
Another purple-clad team that Tech needs to beat on a more consistent basis, Kansas State, also handed out two massive beatings to Kingsbury’s program. In 2013, KSU thumped the Baker Mayfield-led Red Raiders 49-26 in Lubbock and in 2014, the Wildcats did the same to a Daivs Webb-led Tech squad in Manhattan, 45-13.
Not surprisingly, Oklahoma had its share of laughers against Tech in the Kingsbury era. In 2015, the No. 17 Sooners made quick work of the Red Raiders in a 63-27 win. And in 2017, they played with their food in the first quarter before asserting their dominance over Nic Shimonek and the Red Raiders, 49-27.
Even Baylor has put some epic poundings on the Red Raiders in recent years. In 2013, the No. 5 Bears lifted their hind leg on the Red Raiders to the tune of 63-34 and in 2015 they almost repeated that performance exactly in a 63-35 win.
But let’s not just pick on poor Kliff Kingsbury. After all, his predecessor Tommy Tuberville was at the helm for his share of bed wettings.
In all, eight of “Pine Box Tubby’s” 17 losses were by at least 20 points. That works out to a worse percentage than Kingsbury at 47.
Taking over in 2010, the former Auburn head coach dropped only one game by 20-plus points, a 45-7 humbling in Norman to No. 16 OU. But that year, he also dropped a 14-point game at Iowa State, a 17-point game at home to Oklahoma State, and an 18-point game on the road at A&M.
The next season, the wheels really came off for Tuberville. After upsetting No. 3 OU in Norman, Tech lost its final five games, four of which were by 20 points. In those four blowouts, Tech lost to Iowa State, Texas, Oklahoma State, and Baylor by an average of 37.5 points. The most painful was the 66-6 home folly against Oklahoma State, the worst home loss in program history. (But at least that game gave us our introduction to the “Dancing Ginger”, which is the most fitting symbol of the Tuberville era.)
In Tuberville’s swan song, 2012, Tech dropped 20-point games to OU, Kansas State, and Oklahoma State. The average margin in those games was 30 points.
Hopefully, those types of games will be fewer and much, much farther between during Matt Wells’ tenure. At Utah State, he did have 10 losses by 20 or more points, but you have to remember that he was coaching at an underdog Group of 5 program that regularly played teams out of its weight class.
Of those ten losses, four came to Power 5 programs, with Wisconsin, Tennessee, and USC being responsible for three of them. What’s more, Mountain West Conference bully Boise St. was responsible for two more of those losses.
That’s not to say that Wells hasn’t seen his team have its share of forgettable performances. But a look at his career at Utah St. shows far fewer games in which his team simply failed to compete.
Today, let’s look deeper into the worst losses the new Red Raider head coach has endured. Though we’ve spent plenty of time talking about 20-point losses, let’s not only focus on such instances for Wells because blowout defeats to Power 5 programs are not as disgraceful for Utah State as they are for Tech. Instead, let’s look at five times when Wells’ team just simply did not either compete as well as expected or gave away a game that they fully expected to win.