Texas Tech football: Loss to Arizona a reality check for Red Raiders

The Texas Tech football team received a solid reality check in its 28-14 loss to Arizona in Tucson on Saturday.

The Matt Wells honeymoon in Lubbock came to an end Saturday night in the Texas Tech football team’s 28-14 loss at Arizona. In a game that was up for grabs into the 4th quarter, the 2019 Red Raiders looked all too much like previous incarnations of the program as they were out-coached, out-muscled, and out-executed by a team not expected to be anywhere near contention in the PAC 12 this fall.

We will have plenty of time to dissect the critical plays that turned the game in the Wildcats’ favor such as a misguided fake FG in the first half or a puzzling decision to blitz off the edge on third down leaving no defenders in the second layer of the defense allowing Arizona QB Khalil Tate who to romp 84-yards to the endzone. But in the moments following this loss, let’s look big picture.

That picture is one that is showing just how far this program is from contention. On a day when we saw Kansas State win at Mississippi State, TCU take down Purdue in Indiana, Oklahoma drill UCLA at the Rose Bowl, and West Virginia knock off N.C. State in Morgantown, the Red Raiders were delt a dose of humble pie in the desert.

What was stunning was not that Tech lost but in how the loss came about. For two decades, we’ve taken for granted that the Red Raider offense would be able to put up yards and points at will. But when taking on the nation’s No. 123 defense, Alan Bowman and his offensive teammates were dominated all night long.

The sophomore completed just 30 of 55 passes for 307 yards and a touchdown. He was out of sorts for the second-straight game as he repeatedly missed open receivers, threw the ball out of bounds instead of giving his pass-catchers a shot at making a play, and seemingly made the wrong read time after time. What’s more, he was intercepted twice in the first half with both cutting short promising drives.

However, his offensive line was no better. The Wildcats battered the Tech QB all night long and at one point appeared to have knocked Bowman out of the game.

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That was maybe the most disappointing development in this game. The unit that returned four starters and was supposed to be Tech’s strength on that side of the ball struggled all night to block a 3-man pass rush.

On the other side of the ball, the defense was more than good enough to win. Holding an offense that came into the game averaging over 51 points per game to just 28 is all one could ask of Keith Patterson’s defense, which simply ran out of gas in the second half.

In the end, this game will serve as a reminder that the Matt Wells rebuild will not be quick and painless. This is a program that’s been mediocre at best for the better part of a decade and has not been relevant in the Big 12 since George W. Bush was in the Oval Office.

Two solid showings against Montana State and UTEP might have given us some false hope that Wells was a miracle worker. But we should all keep in mind that even the best coaches on campus, Tim Tadlock and Chris Beard, missed the postseason in their first years with the Red Raiders. Why would Wells have any easier of a time turning around his program?

When your program is as dysfunctional as this one was under the previous regime, there are going to be painful setbacks on the road back to relevance. And that’s what this game was, painful.

From the 300-plus rushing yards allowed to the numerous players that hobbled off the field with assorted injuries to the inexplainable decisions from the players and the coaches, this was a game that we will want to forget but one that those inside the football facility must learn from.

They must learn quickly too because the road ahead for this team is daunting. After a week off to lick their wounds, Tech travels to Norman before hosting Oklahoma State and traveling to Baylor.

Any thoughts that a happy Alan Bowman would mean an automatic return to contention have been erased. This offense is about as far from a well-oiled machine as possible right now and Saturday, it looked more like a clown car that was running on saltwater and producing nothing more lethal than flatulance.

If any of us had fantasies that the Matt Wells era would be a meteoric rise from a decade of tail-chasing to a season of instant national respect, those dreams should now have been buried in the Southern Arizona desert. This is not going to be an easy or aesthetically pleasing process at times but the good news is that teams are allowed to get better over the course of the season. And given what we saw from the Red Raiders in Arizona, that’s what Wells’ team had better damned well do if they are to have any hope of a postseason birth this fall.