Texas Tech Football All-Decade Team: The offensive line
With the decade coming to an end, we put together the All-Decade Texas Tech football team and today we look at the big men up front.
The Texas Tech football program has now completed its ninth decade of football and it was certainly one that won’t be forgotten. The problem is that it will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
But let’s look back on some of the faces that made us smile during this tumultuous ten-year descent into irrelevance by putting together an all-decade team. Today, we start with the offensive line, which is often the unforgotten foundation of the entire team.
Speaking of foundations, the past ten seasons of Red Raider football have been a disaster because the program has lacked a strong foundation. That’s what three head coaches in the span of ten years will do.
Just days prior to the start of the 2010s, Tech fired the winningest head coach in program history, Mike Leach, and in January of 2010 hired Tommy Tuberville to be his replacement. Though the former Auburn and Ole Miss head coach was able to put together an overall record of 21-17, his 9-17 mark in Big 12 play and the fact that in 2011 he became the first coach in the Big 12 era to post a losing record at Tech turned many fans against him. As did his poor attitude towards the school and the community of Lubbock.
That’s why his replacement in 2013, Kliff Kingsbury, made sense despite his lack of head coaching experience at any level of the game. When the former Red Raider QB returned to Lubbock to take over the program after Tuberville bolted for Cincinnatti, it was such a joyous day that hundreds of fans gathered at Memorial Circle as the Victory Bells rang out in celebration.
Unfortunately, Kingsbury was unable to get the program back on its feet. In fact, many would argue he left it in a worse place from a talent standpoint than it was in when he arrived as he went just 35-40 in six seasons.
And one area where he struggled was when it came to recruiting offensive linemen.
This decade, there have been only two first-team All-Big 12 offensive linemen to play for the Red Raiders, Le’Raven Clarke and LaAdrian Waddle. Neither of those players was recruited by Kingsbury.
Meanwhile, there have only been four Red Raiders earn second-team All-Big 12 honors, Clarke, Waddle, Jack Anderson, and Lonnie Edwards. Of that group, Anderson is the only Kliff Kingsbury disciple.
During the last decade, there have been tons of misses with high-profile offensive linemen by the Red Raiders. In fact, the program has had an awful success rate with its 4-star OL signees, which should have been the best players the team landed.
DeMarcus Marshall, a 2018 4-star signee has failed to even crack the two-deep in his two years on campus. Madison Aakamnonu, a 2015 signee, proved to be a decent multi-year starter but never made any all-conference team, which should be the expectation of a 4-star signee.
Jared Kaster, a 2012 recruit, started the final 37 games of his career at center but also never made an all-conference team. 2011 4-star signee Tony Morales was one of the top o-line recruits in the nation but missed parts of four seasons with various injuries and never made an all-conference team as a Red Raider as well.
Other players that were expected to be significant contributors for the Red Raiders but ultimately proved to be busts along the offensive front include Justin Murphy (2014), Conner Dyer (2015), Trace Ellison (2015), Gio Pancotti (2016), and Beau Carpenter (2010).
Of course, there have been some solid offensive linemen come through this program in the last decade as well and some are even still active in the NFL. So let’s look at the all-2010s Red Raider offensive line.