Texas Tech football all-decade team: The linebackers

Texas Tech football fans have been lucky to witness the play of these three all-decade linebackers over that past 10 years.

Perhaps no position group on the field most personifies the game of football better than the linebackers.  A unique blend of size, strength, speed, intelligence, and grit, linebackers are the heart and soul of every football team and you almost never find a great team that has below average linebackers.  Fortunately, the Texas Tech basketball program has had its share of fantastic players at that spot.

Of course, the best-ever to wear the Scarlet and Black was Zach Thomas.  The Pampa, Texas native is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and was part of the initial Texas Tech Ring of Honor class.

The Pampa, Texas native ranks fifth all-time in program history with 390 career tackles,131 of which came during his senior season in 1995. He totaled six forced fumbles, recovered four fumbles and broke up seven passes before the Miami Dolphins selected him in the fifth round of the 1996 NFL Draft.

Meanwhile, the program’s leading tackler manned the middle linebacker spot in the early years of the Mike Leach era.   From 1999-2002, Lawrence Flugence amassed 500 career tackles, including a school single-season record 192 as a senior.  He finished his career with more tackles than any Big 12 player ever.

From 1983-86, Brad Hastings earned three All-Southwest Conference honors and was named a 3rd-team All-American as a senior.  And during his career, he played alongside another great Red Raider LB.

Midland’s Michael Johnson made 393 career tackles from 1984-87 playing for his high school head coach, Spike Dykes.  He ranks fourth on the program’s all-time tackles list.

But if you notice, most of the program’s all-time greats played two decades ago or more.  And following Flugence’s graduation, Tech struggled to find another star linebacker as that spot was often the weakness of the defense.

But that has begun to change recently, especially the last five years.  Tech has had some extremely productive and memorable linebackers come through the program since the middle of this decade and the talent there has gradually increased with each passing signing class.

So let’s take a look at our all-decade Texas Tech linebackers because they have helped sure up a position that had become a problem for the better part of a decade.  But first, we will start with some honorable-mention candidates.