Texas Tech football: Offense is not coming through in big moments
The first drive of the 4th quarter at Arizona
Thus far, the 28-14 loss at Arizona has been Tech’s second-largest margin of defeat after the 55-16 disciplining the Red Raiders received at the hands of Oklahoma in Norman. Though the Wildcats handed Tech a two-touchdown loss, the game was much closer than that.
In fact, Tech held a 14-13 lead on the first play of the final quarter. But on that play, Arizona’s Gary Brightwell scored on a 1-yard TD run to put his team up 20-13.
Still, with the entirety of the 4th quarter to play, there was no time to panic for the Red Raiders. They knew that if they could answer with their own touchdown, the game would be back in their favor.
Nope.
The problem is that on the most important offensive possession of this game, Tech managed to pick up just 20 yards on six plays before punting. This proved to be the moment when the game got away from the Red Raiders.
Tech managed to pick up one third-down conversion when Alan Bowman found R.J. Turner near the sideline for a 10-yard gain on 3rd-and-4. But that would be it for that drive as the Wildcat defense would continue to confuse and frustrate Bowman as it had all night in what has to be considered the worst start of his career thus far.
On this drive, the Red Raiders not only failed to answer the Arizona score, but they also failed to give an exhausted defense much of a breather. Tech managed to take just 3:42 off the game clock and when the defense returned to the field, the fatigue was unmistakable.
Keep in mind, that on its previous drive, Arizona had held the ball for 14 plays, nine of which were on the ground. Then, after Tech failed to do anything against the No. 124 defense in the nation, the Wildcats took over at their own 1-yard-line and proceeded to drive the ball 99 yards for a touchdown with all 13 plays on that drive coming via the run game.
The drive chewed up 7:10 on the clock and when Tech got the ball back, there was only 4:05 to play and the deficit had ballooned to 14 points. Ballgame.
We’ve spoken all year about this team’s lack of quality depth in the front seven on defense. But while that problem has only gotten worse due to injuries as the year has progressed, even in the third game of the season, when there were far fewer injury concerns, this team just didn’t have the number of dependable players needed to compete.
That’s when the offense needed to step up and give the defense a boost. But OC David Yost’s squad sputtered when the game was on the line for the first of what would be several times this year.