Texas Tech football: Why Matt Wells’ first staff is far better than Kliff Kingsbury’s

Defensive Line Coach: Paul Randolph vs. John Scott Jr.

One of the most difficult jobs on the Texas Tech staff has traditionally been defensive line coach.  Annually, the Red Raiders have struggled to put pressure on opposing quarterbacks and Tech’s DL coaches often have to try to squeeze the most out of overachieving players rather than grooming blue-chip players like coaches at other Big 12 programs have the luxury of doing.

In 2019, that task falls upon long-time college assistant Paul Randolph, who comes to Tech after three years in the same role at Memphis.  WIth 20 years of collegiate coaching experience including stints at West Virginia, Alabama, and Arizona State, Randolph is rather highly-respected.

While coaching the defensive line at Arizona State, he produced five All-PAC 12 honorees in just three seasons. What’s more, in his lone season at Pitt (2011), the Panthers averaged 3.31 sacks per game.

Perhaps just as important is his pedigree as a recruiter.  While at Alabama, he was recognized by Rivals.com as one of the nation’s top-25 recruiters.  (Though, recruiting to Alabama is much easier than recruiting to Texas Tech.)

Meanwhile, Kingsbury’s first defensive line coach John Scott did not have nearly the same type of major college pedigree.  Prior to Tech, he coached DL and special teams at FCS member Georgia Southern for three years. Prior to that was one year at another FCS program, Missouri State.

That was preceded by stops at Western Carolina, Norfolk State, and Louisiana-Lafayette.  While coaching at lower-level programs is not an indication that a coach is bad at his craft, it is advantageous to have a coach like Randolph with several years of experience at big-time schools rather than a coach that has never coached at a Power 5 school.  And when trying to put the best possible staff around a first-time coach like Kingsbury, more major conference experience would have been helpful.