Texas Tech football: Position groups to watch vs. Montana State

When the Texas Tech football team takes on Montana State Saturday, keep an eye on how these position groups perform.

We are on the cusp of another Texas Tech football season and in 2019, there’s perhaps as much intrigue about an opener against an FCS team as one can remember.  That’s because every Red Raider fan wants to see how this team looks with vastly different schemes in place on both sides of the football.

Saturday’s contest with Montana State will be the seventh time Tech has played an FCS team in the first game of the season since 2011.  Fortunately, Tech has not been the victim of an upset in any of those games.

In all, the Red Raiders have gone 64-27-3 in openers.  And last year’s 47-27 loss to Ole Miss was the first time since 2002 that Tech suffered a loss in week-one since 2002.  Of course, that year Tech fell to 45-21 on the road to an Ohio State team that was ranked No. 13 at the time and which went on to capture the national title.

Interestingly, it was the second time Tech had opened a season at Ohio State.  In 1990, the Red Raiders put a scare in the No. 18 Buckeyes before falling 17-10.

It has been rare for Tech to open on the road, especially in the modern era of the program.  Since the turn of the century, only five times has a Red Raider football season begun a season away from Jones Stadium with four of those games being true road contests.

While Tech has had some interesting week-one opponents, nearly all have been on the road.  In addition to the Ohio State games, most of the marquee season openers were not played in Lubbock.

In 1999, Tech went to Arizona State in the season’s first week.  That trip did not go well as Tech not only lost the game 31-13, it lost starting running back Ricky Williams for the year to a knee injury.

Two years earlier, the Red Raiders were in Knoxville, Tennessee to face Peyton Manning and the No. 5 Tennessee Volunteers.  Tech was blasted 52-17 in one of the worst defeats of the Spike Dykes era.

In 1996, the first-ever Big 12 game sent Tech to Manhattan, Kansas to take on No. 21 Kansas State.  Tech lost a frustrating 21-14 game that featured a number of questionable calls by the officials in the days prior to instant replay.

The 1995 opener saw Tech nearly pull off an upset of No. 4 Penn State in Happy Valley.  But the Nittany Lions kicked a last-second field goal to edge out Zach Thomas and the Red Raiders 24-23.

1987 also got off a less than optimal start on the road.  In a 40-16 loss to No. 8 Florida State in Tallahassee, Tech scored only three points in the final three quarters after putting up 13 in the first.

That’s not to say that all of the opponents Tech has hosted to kick off a season have been lacking.  In 1992, No. 15 Oklahoma came to Lubbock in week one and drilled Tech 34-9.

In 1989, No. 20 Arizona began the season at Jones Stadium and learned a tough lesson about how difficult life can be for ranked teams in Lubbock.  That day, Tech upset the Wildcats 24-14 as part of a 3-0 start to the season.

But the most high-profile team to begin its season at the Jones was the 1979 USC Trojans, which came in as the No. 1 team in the nation.  Tech put up a decent fight against a team that would finish the year 11-0-1 and No. 2 in the nation, falling 21-7.   Considering that the trojans featured such legends as Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen, Bruce Matthews, and Anthony Munoz, losing by 14 points was nothing to be ashamed of for the Red Raiders.

This year, there won’t be that type of hype about the week-one opponent but instead, we are excited because we will get our first opportunity to see what a Matt Wells Texas Tech football team looks like.  This will be the first time since 1999 that an “Air Raid” disciple will not be running the offense (though Tech still plans to play an up-tempo style that will put plenty of points on the board) and we all want to see how the trademark Red Raider offense looks after being overhauled.

It will be interesting to see if offensive coordinator David Yost’s balanced attack will produce as many big plays as we’ve come to expect from Tech football in the last twenty years.  And with new wrinkles in his spread scheme such as the use of a true tight end, Yost’s plan of attack will look a bit different to astute Red Raider fans.

Meanwhile, many will find it refreshing to see Tech play an aggressive and attacking style of defense.  For the majority of the last two decades, the Red Raider defensive coordinators have adhered to the bend but don’t break philosophy, which has yielded only the occasional effective season on that side of the ball.

While we all wish the Kliff Kingsbury era would have worked out, we must admit that a breath of fresh air is likely what this program needed most.  We will get to see the tangible results of that much-needed change for the first time on Saturday.  As we all take a look at this new iteration of Red Raider football, keep a close eye on the following position groups because they are areas where Tech still has some legitimate question marks as the season begins.