What Texas Tech football must do to be relevant in the Big 12 race

Stay healthy, especially at QB

This team is only going to have a chance to compete if starting QB Alan Bowman is on the field for all 12 games.  We saw last year how his injuries derailed a once-promising season and this fall the depth behind him is not appreciably better.

Junior Jett Duffey returns after frustrating fans last season with crippling and untimely interceptions.  At times, he was effective, especially against Texas when he threw for 444 yards and 4 touchdowns but he threw six interceptions despite starting just three games.

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The other options are true freshman Maveric McIvor, who is working his way back from a torn knee ligament suffered last September and senior grad transfer Jackson Tyner who was previously at Rice.

When Bowman went down, it was the continuation of a frustrating run of QB injuries this decade for the Red Raiders.  Over the past 10 seasons, Tech’s starting QB missed multiple games in 2009, 2013, 2014, and 2018.  That comes after we went the first nine years of the Mike Leach era (2000-2008) without having that type of misfortune at the most important position of the field.

Hopefully, last season was enough for Tech to finally pay its debt to the football gods.  Not only was Bowan knocked out of action twice, but game-one starter McLane Carter was also hobbled all season by a high ankle sprain and though he started the final game of the year, he reaggravated that injury on the first series rendering him ineffective for the rest of the game.

Of course, the only reason he was starting that game was that Duffey had tweaked a knee which made him a one-dimensional player against Kansas State and kept him from even suiting up against Baylor.

But last year also saw other key players go down with injuries.  For instance, linebacker Dakota Allen was forced to miss the West Virginia and Kansas State games while exiting the Texas and OU games early.  And in the first game that he was inserted into the starting offensive line, left guard Jacob Hines saw his season come to an end when he blew out his knee against Oklahoma.

In fact, we couldn’t even get out of fall camp last year without taking some significant hits to the defense.  Senior corner Octavius Morgan, who was in line to be a starter, blew out his knee in the first intrasquad scrimmage, an injury that ultimately ended his football career.  And starting safety Jah’Shawn Johnson missed the first three games of the season after offseason shoulder surgery.

At running back, only one Red Raider, Za’Zhawn Henry, was healthy for all 12 games.  The most impactful loss among that group was the toll injuries took on Da’Leon Ward who had a strong opening week with 90 yards and two touchdowns.  He missed the next two games and did not have more than 15 carries or 75 yards in a game the rest of the season while finding the endzone only once more.

The starting units on both sides of the ball for the 2019 Red Raiders are talented enough to compete with most Big 12 teams.  But the depth behind them is more than suspect.  That’s why this team has to finally have the injury gods smile upon it this year for a surprise run in the Big 12 to be in the cards.