Texas Tech football: Lessons Red Raiders can learn from Super Bowl LIV
As Texas Tech football fans watched Super Bowl LIV, there were a number of lessons that we can learn about how the Red Raiders should build the 2020 team.
Now that Super Bowl LIV is in the books, we face eight months without meaningful football (sorry XFL). But as we head into the offseason, Texas Tech football fans got a crash course on how winning football teams can be built.
In the modern era of the sport, the difference in the way the game is played at the collegiate and professional levels has never been more minuscule. The influence of the spread offense passing game, which had its genesis in the college ranks, has now taken over the NFL to the point that a product of one of the NCAA’s most pass-happy teams is being hailed as the face of the league.
Super Bowl LIV MVP Pat Mahomes has finally put to bed the notion that Texas Tech quarterbacks are merely products of their system. With last night’s 31-20 victory over the San Francisco 49ers by Mahomes and the Kansas Chiefs, the Texas Tech product has become the second-youngest QB to ever lead his team to the game’s ultimate prize.
What’s more, he’s now the youngest Super Bowl MVP in history at just 24 years old. Not surprisingly, he’s now the 30th QB in the 54 years of the Super Bowl to take home that honor.
It struck many Texas Tech football fans that 50 years ago, the last time that the Chiefs won a Super Bowl, another Red Raider played a critical role. In Super Bowl IV when the Cheifs beat Minnesota 23-7 in New Orleans, the late E.J. Holub was the starting center for Kansas City.
By starting Super Bowl I at middle LB and Super Bowl IV at center, Holub remains the only player to start two different Super Bowls on opposite sides of the ball. Though he won’t ever be as huge of a legend in K.C. as Mahomes, the Lubbock native is a member of the Kansas City Cheifs Hall of Fame as well as the College Football Hall of Fame and the Texas Tech Football Ring of Honor.
Certainly, the family and friends of Holub, who passed away on September 24, 2019, were overjoyed with the thought that 50 years after one of the first Texas Tech football legends led the Chiefs to the Super Bowl title, the latest Texas Tech football legend became the one to end a half-century of frustration for one of the NFL’s proudest and most iconic franchises.
While every Red Raider fan was certainly filled with pride to see Mahomes climb the mountain and hoist the Lombardi Trophy while simultaneously claiming the mantle of the face of the NFL, we also had an opportunity to gain some insight about how the modern-day game of football can be played. So let’s take a look at some lessons that the Red Raiders can learn from Super Bowl LIV.