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Texas Tech football: Areas that Red Raiders failed to solidify in 2019

By Matthew Conner

LUBBOCK, TEXAS - NOVEMBER 23: The Texas Tech Red Raiders are led onto the field by the Masked Rider before the college football game against the Kansas State Wildcats on November 23, 2019 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TEXAS - NOVEMBER 23: The Texas Tech Red Raiders are led onto the field by the Masked Rider before the college football game against the Kansas State Wildcats on November 23, 2019 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images) /
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As we head into the offseason, the Texas Tech football program has to solidify some areas that were thought to be in good shape before the season began.

The challenge of building a college football program is that the roster is always changing. Unlike in the NFL where pillars of a team may be in place for a decade, the most that collegiate programs like our beloved Texas Tech football program can depend on any player for is four standout years.

Just as soon as a player blossoms into a star at the college level, the countdown clock already ticking towards the moment when he either graduates or heads to the NFL.

We saw that in 2015-16 with Pat Mahomes.  By the time he had established himself as the starting QB after a stellar 4-game audition to close his freshman year, there was little time for Tech to get the rest of the program in the type of shape that it needed to be in so that his transcendence could be maximized.

Of course, we know that didn’t happen as the Red Raiders went just 12-13 in the two full seasons that Mahomes was in Lubbock.  That’s because he played opposite the worst defense in the country, which could not come up with enough stops to win five games in which Mahomes and the offense put up 40 or more points.

When Mahomes was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in 2017, he again found himself playing for a team that struggled defensively.  But unlike when he was in Lubbock, he will be QB long enough for the team to address its greatest flaw and thus build a championship team.

Thus the challenge facing Matt Wells at Texas Tech, a program that does not yearly replenish its ranks with recruiting classes consisting entirely of 4 and 5-star players.  What Wells has to do is to try to get every aspect of Red Raider football back to a place of health so that if he lands another transcendent player, he can capitalize more than his predecessor did when the greatest QB in program history showed up unexpectedly.

For that to happen, Wells has to make significant progress in areas of weakness virtually every year while also ensuring that the healthy aspects of his team remain that way.  It is quite the juggling act and one that he did not seem to handle all that well in his first season.

Entering 2019, we all knew that Tech was far from contention but we also believed that there were aspects of the program that were healthy enough to be considered strengths.  Unfortunately, many of those areas became huge question marks, if not complete weaknesses, during the course of his debut season.

Each of the following aspects of the program are facets that Wells needed to build upon this year but instead, he saw them deteriorate before his very own eyes.  Looking at that list paints a rather gloomy look at where Texas Tech football sits as we turn the page to a new decade.

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