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

Patterson is working with more talent

There are only two players on this roster guaranteed to be drafted, middle linebacker Jordyn Brooks and right guard Jack Anderson.  The former is having a career year and the latter is out for the year.  That only serves to widen the talent disparity between the two sides of the ball for the Red Raiders.

After those two players, who is Texas Tech’s third-best player?  Almost everyone would agree that it is defensive lineman Broderick Washington.

How about the fourth-best player on this roster?  You could make a case that it is safety Douglas Coleman, who was this week named a semifinalist for the Jim Thorpe Award, given to the nation’s top defensive back. He leads the nation with six interceptions.

Just run down the list of players on each side of the ball and decide which has more talent.  Would you consider the receiving corps of T.J. Vasher, R.J. Turner, McLane Mannix, Dalton Rigdon, and Co. to be better than a defensive backfield featuring Coleman, Adrian Frye, Damarcus Fields, Zech McPhearson, and Ja’Marcus Ingram?  Though neither is top-notch, the defensive backfield features at least one sure-fire all-conference player and many more solid contributors than the most pedestrian group of receivers we have seen from this program in the modern era.

How about the line of scrimmage?  Certainly a group with Washington, Eli Howard, Jaylon Hutchings, Nelson Mbanasor, and Tony Bradford Jr. would be considered stronger than an offensive line missing its best player (Anderson) and featuring a redshirt freshman center (Dawson Deaton) and a player in Weston Wright whose best offer out of high school other than Tech was Air Force, now starting in place of Anderson.

The difference in the linebackers and running backs is laughable.  Though redshirt freshman SaRodorick Thompson is impressing this year, he, Ta’Zhawn Henry and Armand Shyne come nowhere near being as talented as Brooks, Riko Jeffers, Xavier Benson, Evan Rambo, and Tyrique Matthews who combine to make the linebacking corps one of the most talented units on the roster.

If you were to list the ten best players on this team, you could argue that seven would call the defense home (Brooks, Washington, Coleman, McPhearson, Jeffers, Howard, Rambo).  Thus, in a logical world, far more should be expected of Patterson than Yost.