Texas Tech football: T.J. Vasher to stay with Red Raiders for senior year

This week, wide receiver T.J. Vasher announced that he will return to the Texas Tech football program for his senior year, which will help solidify a young receiving corps.

T.J. Vasher is coming back to the Texas Tech football program for his senior year.  But did he really have better options?  After a disappointing junior year that saw him post a career-low in yardage while being suspended for two games, it appears as if his standing with the Red Raiders was in jeopardy.

Now, thanks to a post he published on his Twitter account (which is set to private) on Tuesday, we know that he remains part of the team and will not be seeking a transfer as many people thought he might after he missed both the West Virginia and TCU games for a team-imposed suspension. Here’s hoping he can finally put together in 2020 the type of year we have been waiting to see from him for his entire career.

It might be easy to forget, but when he signed with the Red Raiders in 2016, the Wichita Falls product was a 4-star commit and the No. 53 player in Texas.  He had offers from the likes of Ohio State, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Colorado, and Houston among others.

But since he’s been on campus, he’s yet to have the type of impact that a player of that regard should.  He’s yet to top the 687 yards, seven touchdowns, and 54 catches he amassed in 2018.

This year, he had his worst season as a Red Raider, especially given that he was expected to be the leader of a receiving corp that was replacing the starters at the three other positions.   That didn’t happen.

With just 42 receptions, 515 yards, and six touchdown catches, he was just another receiver in the Big 12 rather than emerging as an All-Conference player, which many thought he might.  In fact, he lost his starting job to grad transfer R.J. Turner in the middle of the season as both Turner and redshirt freshman Erik Ezukanma had more receiving yards than he did by season’s end.

Throughout his career, he’s struggled with consistency.  Capable of making the remarkable circus catch, he’s not proven to be a reliable target who makes the routine plays with regularity.  Thus, he’s never taken his game to the level that his innate talent indicates he has somewhere in him.

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But even if he is going to be the same player next fall that he has essentially been in all three of his years as a Red Raider, he could help sure up a group of receivers that will be amazingly young next year.  With Turner now gone, Ezukanma (who led the team in receiving yards and was tied with Vasher for second in receptions) will be penciled in as the starter opposite him.

Also, expect the two 2020 signees, Loic Founji and Ja’Lynn Polk, to compete for playing time next fall as true freshmen.  If Vasher were to have transferred (it’s hard to fathom the NFL would have had an interest at this point), Tech might have had to start a true freshman in his spot or go fishing in the grad transfer market again.  Of course, those two options could come to fruition even with Vasher in the fold but he gives this team a decent player who still has the potential to be a dominant player to rely upon on.

For the entirety of his career, it has been what is between Vasher’s ears that’s limited him as a player.  The 6-foot-6 receiver has all the physical talent he needs in order to be a future NFL player. He’s now got one more offseason to grow up and if he manages to do so, he could be a huge key to helping the Red Raiders get back to a bowl game next year.