Texas Tech football: Players that helped themselves most in fall camp

After four weeks of fall camp for the Texas Tech football program, it appears like a number of Red Raiders have helped themselves tremendously.

With the beginning of the first official game week of the 2019 season, fall camp is finally over.  Now, the Texas Tech football team and the Lubbock community is ramping up for the first season of the Matt Wells era.

Monday night, the program hosted Matador Monday, a practice open to the public followed by a meet-and-greet at Jones Stadium.  And during the event, Texas Tech head basketball coach Chris Beard promised that if the Red Raider football team goes undefeated at home in 2019, he will throw a block party on Broadway.  And as you can see by the way he is holding his mic in the video below from Eric Kelly of KAMC sports, he certainly means business.

Of course, Beard is not the only Red Raider excited about the start of the 2019-20 Texas Tech athletics season.  After the Red Raiders had the most successful year in the history of the university last school year, there is an opportunity for the entire athletic program to take a huge step forward on the national scene by sustaining the momentum it built in 2018-19.

Everyone knows that nothing would help the athletic department more than a return to national prominence by the football team.  If Wells can elevate his program to the level of Beard’s hoops program, Tim Tadlock’s baseball program, or Wes Kittley’s track program, Texas Tech could have a legitimate claim for being the top athletic program in the nation.

However, expecting Wells to get to such lofty heights right away might be a bit ambitious.  After all, it is far more difficult for teams to climb from mediocrity to prominence in football than in any other sport.

Still, the first step in that process begins on Saturday with the season-opener against Montana State.  And that game will provide some players with their first opportunity to play key roles as Red Raiders.

We saw the same in last year’s opener against Ole Miss when a handful of players saw the first significant action of their careers.  Alan Bowman made his first appearance throwing for 273 yards and a touchdown in relief of the injured McLane Carter.

Also in that game, junior Antoine Wesley led the Red Raiders with six receptions but his 65-yard showing was largely overshadowed by T.J. Vasher’s one-handed catch.  Vasher caught four passes for 66 yards and was the darling of social media thanks to his insane first-quarter grab.

https://twitter.com/espn/status/1036038563480133632?s=20

Also making his first true impact as a Red Raider in that game was senior Ja’Deion High who had four catches for 62 yards and the team’s only touchdown reception.  It was the prelude to a solid season that saw the Hereford native grab 62 passes for 804 yards and four touchdowns.

On the other side of the ball in that game, a grad transfer came out of nowhere to lead the team with eight tackles.  After being on the roster for less than two weeks, safety John Bonney was pressed into immediate action because of the injury to Jah’Shawn Johnson which made the Texas transfer an immediate starter in week one.

This season, the Red Raiders will be relying heavily on the grad transfer market to play critical roles.  There were five grad transfers listed on the first official depth chart released by the football program yesterday and one, Ja’Marcus Ingram, will have been on campus for about the same amount of time as Bonney had been at this time a year ago.

That’s the beauty of week one.  Players that have been waiting and working for their opportunity finally get their opportunity to show out and become difference-makers.

Of course, that process begins in fall camp when the roster takes shape over a three-week grind of practices and intrasquad scrimmages that set the tone for the season.  So let’s take a look at some players on this year’s team who appear to have helped themselves the most in camp this August