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Texas Tech football: Areas of disappointment thus far in 2019

By Matthew Conner

LUBBOCK, TEXAS - SEPTEMBER 07: Head coach Matt Wells of Texas Tech walks onto the field during a timeout in the second half of the college football game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the UTEP Miners at Jones AT&T Stadium on September 07, 2019 in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TEXAS - SEPTEMBER 07: Head coach Matt Wells of Texas Tech walks onto the field during a timeout in the second half of the college football game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the UTEP Miners at Jones AT&T Stadium on September 07, 2019 in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) /

This defense is not forcing turnovers as we expected

Forgive me for complaining about turnovers a week after Tech took the ball away from Arizona three times.  But when looking big picture, the influx of takeaways we were promised by Wells and his DC Keith Patterson during the offseason has yet to materialize.

Make no mistake, the two Douglas Coleman picks and the Jordyn Brooks fumble recovery helped keep Tech in the game as the offense struggled in Tucson.  But this defense is going to have to do that with regularity in Big 12 play if Tech is going to have a chance to be competitive.

Patterson has said that their goal is three takeaways per game.  That means he wanted nine by this point of the season.  He’s only received one-third of that.   Certainly, such a total is a disappointment.

Last year, Tech came up with only 18 takeaways.  That was an average of just 1.5 per game.  Obviously, that is not good enough.  (Interestingly, that feeble number was put up by another DC who has built his entire strategy around taking the ball away, David Gibbs.)

This year, Tech’s actually performing at a worse rate by forcing just one turnover per game on average.  That’s far from what we were told we should expect from this aggressive new scheme in 2019.

Moving forward, Tech will next face the team in the Big 12 with the fewest turnovers this year.  Oklahoma has given the ball away just twice in three games, which is not surprising considering how wide open their explosive receivers have been seemingly all year.

But the next week, we will see Oklahoma State in Lubbock.  The Cowboys have turned the ball over six times, more than any Big 12 team but Kansas.  Maybe that will be a time that Tech’s defense can have a huge day in terms of taking the ball away.

Keith Patterson has said that to survive in this conference, defenses have to take the ball away and give their offense more possessions.  It’s time for that philosophy to become more than just theory and be an ingrained part of this program’s DNA.

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