Texas Tech football: Red Raider fans aiming criticism at wrong coordinator

Patterson has had to deal with far fewer injuries

Quick, name the most important player that Texas Tech has lost to injury this year.  Easy.  It’s QB Alan Bowman, who has not played since the third game of the year thanks to a shoulder injury.  In his absence, Tech has gone just 1-3.

Next, what would be the second most significant injury suffered this year?  It would have to be the loss of preseason All-Big 12 right guard Jack Anderson, the only preseason all-conference player on the Red Raider offense.  Anderson has not played since the Oklahoma game and will miss the remainder of the year with an upper-body injury.

Continuing down this road.  Whos is the third-best player on the roster to miss multiple games this year?  That would be right tackle Terence Steele who missed the first two games of the season and has not looked right since returning from his own upper-body injury.

Of course, the receiving corps has not escaped unscathed either.  After a promising start to the year that saw him have a 100-yard game in his Red Raider debut, inside receiver Xavier White is out for the season with a shoulder injury.   His explosive athleticism and ability to run after the catch would be a huge boost to an offense that is lacking juice this year.

Then there is the fact that senior receiver Seth Collins has yet to play this year as his recovery from a broken collar bone continues to progress more slowly than expected.  Last year, he was the team’s 4th-leading receiver with 32 catches for 317 yards.

Now, let’s look at the most significant player on defense to suffer a season-ending injury.  There hasn’t been one.

In fact, the vast majority of the two-deep rotation on that side of the ball remains healthy.  Maybe the most impactful defender to miss the entire season would be true freshman DE Gilbert Ibeneme, a 4-star signee that could have helped with the pass rush.

Perhaps the most significant injury Patterson has had to deal with since week one has been the leg injury suffered by corner Des Smith in the OSU game.  The senior from Odessa has not returned to the lineup but his absence has been rather easy to survive given that he was not a full-time starter to begin with.

The rest of the injuries on the defense have been short term.  Safety Adrian Frye missed the OSU game was but was ably replaced by Thomas Leggett and Ja’Marcus Ingram, the former of which missed the Baylor game but played Saturday against the Cyclones, as did Frye…for a quarter before he left with a thumb injury.

If Patterson were to lose Jordyn Brooks and Broderick Washington, he still wouldn’t have been as impacted by injury as Yost’s offense has been.  Still, the Red Raider offense is among the nation’s top-20 in total yards while the defense continues to rank no better than it has in years past.