Texas Tech football lands 3-star linebacker Derrick Lewis

Over the weekend, the Texas Tech football program picked up a verbal commitment from Derrick Lewis, a 3-star LB from Schertz, Texas.

The Texas Tech football team’s impressive win over No. 21 Oklahoma State on Saturday in Lubbock was not only beneficial to the team’s overall record and psyche, but it also came on a weekend when the program was hosting a number of highly-valued recruits.

One of those targets was 3-star LB Derrick Lewis, who verbally committed to the Red Raiders following his official visit to Lubbock for last weekend’s game.  He made his decision known Sunday on his Twitter account.

The 6-foot, 200-pounder from Schertz, Texas picked the Red Raiders over such programs as Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Kansas, Boise State, SMU, Colorado State, and others. Rated by 247Sports’ composite rankings as the No. 37 inside linebacker in the nation, he’s the 108th overall prospect in Texas.

Scored as a 0.8593 out of 1.0000, he is the fifth-highest rated player currently committed to the Red Raiders for 2020.  What’s more, he is the second-highest rated defensive commit after L.B. Moore, a defensive end from Amarillo.

Lewis will be joining a program that has seen the middle linebacker position become one of strength in recent years.  Last year saw the inspiring and productive career of Dakota Allen come to an end with 249 tackles in his three years as a Red Raider.  On Sunday, he made his first-ever NFL start manning the middle of the Oakland Raiders’ defense against the Chicago Bears in London.

This year, Jordyn Brooks has emerged as one of the top middle linebackers in the nation.  It isn’t that he came out of nowhere, after all, he’s started from the moment he arrived.  But what he’s doing this year is at another level.  Averaging 12 tackles per game, he leads the Big 12 and is on pace for the third-most single-season tackles in Texas Tech history.

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With Brooks being a senior, the job of quarterbacking the Tech defense next year will likely fall to Riko Jeffers.  The junior has racked up 119 career tackles including 29 in 2019.

Lewis is the first inside LB the Red Raiders have added to the 2020 class.  In the class of 2019, Tech signed Tyrique Matthews and Bryce Robinson, both listed as inside linebackers.  But Matthews has seen most of his action at the “Raider” position while Robinson is on his way to redshirting.

This addition brings Tech’s current recruiting class to 17 players.  Currently ranked 7th in the Big 12 by 247Sports, the class has plenty of room to grow.

After adding only 19 players in the most recent class, there looks to be a need for Matt Wells to bring in a full group this year.  That could mean as many as 25 signees by the time the current recruiting cycle is complete.

Wells has been as active on the recruiting trail as anyone could have asked him to be.  And the early returns on his efforts are positive.

With his first true class already sitting at No. 44 overall and likely to grow significantly, there’s a reason to think that he could land a top-40 class in his first full recruiting cycle as head coach in Lubbock.  That would be a tremendous improvement over what we’ve seen from recent Tech classes (the Red Raiders’ 2019 class was ranked No. 61 and the previous class checked in at No. 72 in the country).

Aside from winning on the field, there’s nothing Wells can do to impress his new constituency more than to have success as a recruiter.  After all, it’s been quite a long time since this program was led by a head coach that excelled in that crucial component of building a program.