Texas Tech football: Why the Red Raiders were able to beat West Virginia
The defense came up with stops in the last 25 yards of the field
It might be wise for us to start measuring Keith Patterson’s defense in non-traditional ways. That’s because it appears like his philosophy is simply never going to yield a unit that ranks highly in total defense, which is a measure of total yards allowed.
The better way to judge this defense seems to be in turnovers and red-zone stops. That’s because Patterson appears to be more than content to give up yards in the first 75 yards of the field as he takes risk after risk with his blitz-happy scheme. But that’s worth it for him if he can generate turnovers and then find a way for his defense to hold up near the endzone.
It’s a maddening system at times but given how awful his secondary is, it’s how he feels he has to operate. There doesn’t seem to be a coverage scheme that the entire secondary can seem to execute properly as a group so Patterson is going to do all he can to get to the QB as a means of protecting his defense’s biggest vulnerability.
Like most teams, West Virginia had their share of chunk plays against the Red Raiders but in this game, only one went for a score. That’s a huge difference from other games like the Kansas and Iowa State losses when Tech allowed a seemingly endless parade of 50-yard-plus touchdowns.
Let’s look at the drives West Virginia had that got to the Red Raider 30 because once an offense gets to that point of the field, it expects points. The Mountaineers managed to broach Tech’s 30-yard-line eight times meaning that there was an opportunity for 56 points. They came away with just 17 and the last seven of those came on their final drive of the game when the outcome had long since been decided.
In the first half, Tech gave up 10 points on four defensive series that saw WVU get to the Red Raider 30. But on the two drives that did not yield any points, the big plays were a Riko Jeffers strip-sack on 4th-and-11 at the Tech 31 and a pass break-up by DaMarcus Fields on 4th-and-6 at the Tech 22 to stop WVU in its tracks just when it looked like the Mountaineers were headed for points.
In the second half, the Red Raiders came up with three more 4th-down stops inside the 30 before WVU scored its garbage-time TD. If WVU had managed to get into the endzone on half of its deep drives into Tech territory, this would have been a much different game.
But that didn’t happen and because the Mountaineers weren’t able to score on huge plays as most Tech opponents have this year, they allowed the Red Raider defense to come up big in the portion of the field where the back of the endzone acts as a 12th defender.