Texas Tech football team has bigger problems than the QB position
This defensive line is getting absolutely no pass rush
When a team knows that its offense is likely to be hamstrung by the loss of a QB, it would be a great time for the defense to step up. While you can’t fault the Red Raider defense as a whole for giving up 28 points to Arizona, you would like to see the Red Raiders find a way to keep Oklahoma below the half-century mark, regardless of how much talent the Sooners have.
One area where it appears that Tech just isn’t good enough this year is the pass rush. For the sake of this conversation, we will include the “Raider” position with the d-line because rushing the QB is that position’s most important role.
At the quarter pole of the season, Tech now sits tied with Oklahoma State for 8th in the BIg 12 in sacks. With just seven in four games, the Red Raider defense has more sacks than only one conference rival, Kansas State.
Wasn’t a selling point of the new Keith Patterson aggressive 3-3-5 scheme that it was going to put tons of pressure on the QB? That has not come to fruition.
Not only is this team not sacking the QB, but it also is not even putting consistent pressure on the passer. Tech has seen 124 passes thrown against its defense this year and has had just eight QB pressures. Making the QB uncomfortable on just 6.4% of all dropbacks is no way to survive in the Big 12.
Saturday would have been a nice time to put consistent pressure on OU’s Jalen Hurts, who is lethal when afforded the time to let his receivers run deep routes. But Tech was credited with just one sack, on a play where Hurts chose to run out of bounds behind the line and was able to get just four pressures all afternoon. The result was a 17-24, 415-yard, 3-TD performance from the Sooners’ Heisman Trophy frontrunner.
It is concerning to see that no Red Raider has more than one sack this year. Defensive leaders like Eli Howard and Broderick Washington must give this team more than they have through four games as each has brought down the QB only once.
Until this team figures out how to get pressure from the d-line, life is going to be next to impossible for the secondary. It feels like we have the conversation on an annual basis and now we are having it again despite the promises from yet another new defensive coordinator that his defense would be better in that regard.