Texas Tech football: Why the Texas game still matters

This program needs to learn how to win meaningful games

The unquestionable lead story for 2019 will be how the Red Raiders have faltered in so many close games.  Four of their six Big 12 losses have come by a combined total of eleven points.

It’s obvious that this team needs to figure out how to win close games if 2020 is going to be any different.  The final opportunity for that comes in Austin.

Sometimes it feels a bit silly to suggest that teams and programs have to figure out how to win games, especially programs that are under the watch of entrenched head coaches.  But for a program under new leadership, as is the case with Tech, figuring out how to have success is a process.

Wells has proven time and again that he can get his team to fight, even when it falls behind by multiple scores early in games.  But he’s yet to demonstrate that he can get his players to come through in the clutch.

Beating Texas on Friday will not make this team into a trendy pick to make noise in next year’s Big 12 race.  But it could be an important bit of success for a team that has come so woefully close to picking up significant wins on multiple occasions this year.

Every new coaching staff has to build a culture in its locker room and show its players that the process will work.  One has to wonder how long the Red Raider players will be able to go without having what Wells and Co. have been asking them to do validated with wins.  That’s why beating the Longhorns would be meaningful because it will show this rebuilding team that they can beat a big-name program by doing what their new coaching staff is asking them to do.