Texas Tech football: How former Red Raiders performed in 2019

With the 2019 Texas Tech football season in the bag, some fans may be wondering how some former Red Raiders performed this fall so let’s take a look.

College football fans ofter suffer from a condition know as euphoric recall.  That is a term coined by the psychological field to describe the phenomenon of only remembering only the best moments or aspects of a previous event or past relationship while discounting or forgetting the negatives.  For Texas Tech football fans, that continues to be the way that many veiew the Mike Leach era.

But today, let’s avoid that tired subject.  Instead, let’s look at how some players that recently left the program performed in 2019 and try to avoid being ensnared by the lost promise of what they could have done for this program.  After all, doing so will only lead to frustration.

In the last decade, player transfers have gone from being rare to expected.  Each year, virtually every program in the country will see a handful of players leave in search of greener pastures.

Already, Tech has seen freshman defensive lineman Quenton Williams enter the transfer portal.  A 3-star 2018 signee from Houston, he was the No. 247 player in the state last year.   After not playing this year, he believes that his opportunities will be greater elsewhere so the 6-foot-4, 240-pounder is following the path taken by so many players in today’s era of the sport.

The transfer portal has become one of the most revolutionary developments in the college game, especially for graduate transfers, as programs have the closest we’ve seen to NFL free agency in the 150 years of the sport.

Tech has certainly been a heavy player in the transfer market.  In 2019, Matt Wells brought in such players as Zech McPhearson, McLane Mannix, R.J. Turner, Armand Shyne, Ja’Marcus Ingram, and Evan Rambo to help immediately solidify the roster.  What’s more, such players as safety Adam Beck and defensive end Eli Howard are former transfers from other FCS programs who have come to Lubbock in recent years.

Additionally, just this week Tech landed LB Brandon Bouyer-Randle from Michigan State via the grad transfer market.  He likely won’t be the last transfer to join the program this year just as Williams isn’t going to be the only one to depart.

It’s a new-age game of give-and-take as players and programs alike shuffle the deck each offseason looking for better fits.  Therefore, it’s become increasingly important for head coaches and their assistants to master the process of evaluating potential transfers just as effectively as they evaluate high school prospects.

But once players leave Tech, they are pretty much forgotten by the masses as we become entrenched in the madness of our own seasons.  Only a player like Baker Mayfield, who transferred within the conference, might remain top of mind for Tech fans and cases like his are rare…thank the Lord.

So let’s take a look at how some former Red Raiders performed this year.  As we do, we will see that some might have actually been a help to this year’s team while others continued to underwhelm.