Texas Tech football: Red Raiders will beat Arizona if…
Make Khalil Tate a one-dimensional player
Arizona’s senior QB Khalil Tate is one of the most dangerous dual-threat players in college football. He possesses the skills needed to win games through the air or on the ground so tonight, the Red Raiders need to make him a one-dimensional player.
Specifically, Tech needs to make Tate win the game with his arm. It isn’t that he’s a poor passer, it’s that his team is not at its best when Tate has to carry his team on his right shoulder.
In his career, Tate has nine games of 200 or more yards passing. In those games, Arizona is just 2-7. What’s more, the Cats are just 2-3 in the five games in which he has thrown for 300 or more yards.
On the other hand, in the seven 100-yard rushing games of his career, Zona is 5-2. That includes a record of 3-0 when he’s run for over 200 yards. (Yes, he’s run for 200 yards in a game three times including a career-high of 327 against Colorado in 2017.)
We have already seen Arizona drop a game this year when having to rely on Tate’s arm. In the week-one loss at Hawaii, Tate threw for 361 yards but it was not enough to bring his team back as he was stopped on the one-yard line on the game’s final play.
There are two factors that make it tough for Arizona to win when Tate has to throw the ball to win. First, he is at times an inefficient passer. For his career, he’s completed just 57.6% of his passes (for reference, Alan Bowman has completed over 70% of his) meaning that the likelihood of stopping his arm is higher than stopping his electric legs. Still, keep in mind that he’s been a 64.3% passer this year, which is a significant step forward from his 56.3% effort last year.
The other reason Tech wants to make Tate put the ball in the air is that he will throw interceptions. His 22 career picks in 582 pass attempts means he’s thrown one pick for every 26.4 pass attempts. When you consider that Bowman has thrown just one pick for every 53 passes, you can see how different these QBs are when it comes to limiting interceptions.
It was a huge 4th quarter INT that turned the Hawaii game against the Wildcats. Tate was picked off at the goal line after he’d driven his team to the Rainbow Warrior 13 looking to erase a three-point deficit with just over seven minutes to play.
Hawaii returned the ball to the 49 and would score the eventual game-winning TD on the ensuing drive. Tech might have an opportunity to take advantage of a similar miscue tonight.
In his last ten games, Khalil Tate has been intercepted eight times with Zona winning just half of those contests. What’s more, the Cats have won none of the four two-INT games of Tate’s career. That’s why the Red Raiders need to make certain that it is Tate’s arm and not his legs that that is the focal point of the Wildcat attack.