Texas Tech football: Why turnovers are not paying off for Red Raiders in 2019

As the Texas Tech football team struggles to find a way to convert turnovers into points, let’s take a look at what is keeping the Red Raiders from taking advantage of their extra possessions.

From the moment we learned that Keith Patterson would be the new defensive coordinator of the Texas Tech football team, we were told that creating turnovers would be the identity of the program on his side of the ball.  After a slow start, the turnovers have started to come in waves but there’s a problem; the offense is not turning these opportunities into points.

After failing to take the ball away once in the first two games of the season, Tech has generated 13 turnovers in the last five contests, an average of 2.6 per game.  With a turnover margin of plus-0.71 per game, Tech is tied with Texas as far as Big 12 teams are concerned.  Baylor leads the way with a turnover surplus of 0.86 per contest.

What’s more, Patterson’s defense is tied with Baylor for the most turnovers forced in the conference.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that those 13 turnovers have yielded just 26 points, a stat first pointed out by Eric Kelly of KMAC in Lubbock who shared that stat on Twitter during Saturday’s loss to Iowa State.  Certainly, Tech needs its takeaways to yield more than an average of just two points.

Interestingly, creating turnovers is not translating to wins for this team.  Tech is just 1-4 in the five games in which it has taken the ball away.  That comes despite the fact that in three of those games, the defense has come up with three or more.

When asked at his weekly press conference what his team needs to do to convert takeaways into points, Wells gave a rambling and confusing answer that did not shed light on the situation.  He did liken 3-and-outs to turnovers and noted that his team had two of those against Iowa State last weekend.  He then went on to admit that failing to score after Damarcus Fields picked off Iowa State QB Brock Purdy in the second half was a turning point in the loss.

"“Certainly we want to try to take every turnover and turn it right into points, and we missed a red zone field goal, or that question doesn’t come up,” he said.  “You know, we would have liked that to have been a touchdown and been only down a field goal there with right around ten, nine, ten minutes to go in the game and it’s a one-possession ballgame. And you think you got two possessions and they got two and here we go. Everybody’s got two possessions and let’s go play ball. So, yeah, I mean that’s the goal. That’s what we want to do.”"

Since Wells was not all that insightful as to why his team has struggled in quick-change situations, let’s see if we can figure out what has been the issue by looking at each of the takeaways that Tech has forced this season.  As we do, there are bound to be some similarities that help us understand what’s keeping this team from scoring after taking the ball away.