Texas Tech football: Statistical areas that must improve this fall

For the Texas Tech football team to improve in 2020, the following statistical categories will have to be areas of improvement.

Though the 2019 Texas Tech football season was rather disappointing at just 4-8, there are reasons for fans to believe that the program is on the cusp of taking a step forward.  That’s not to suggest that 2020 is likely to bring about a magical run to a Big 12 championship but rather, it is to say that this program should expect to return to a bowl game this fall.

After all, the Red Raiders were a botched call away from taking down Baylor in Waco in 2019 and were tied or leading in the fourth quarter of losses to Arizona, Kansas, and TCU.  That all came with third-string QB Jett Duffey making eight starts, a situation that would be less than ideal for any team but especially for a program that had as little margin for error as Tech did last year because of the lack of overall talent on the roster.

So let’s take a look at some statistical categories that the Red Raiders have to improve upon this fall if they hope to start to turn those close losses into victories.  For the sake of this discussion, we will take all of our stats from the website CFBStats.com and we will spend our time looking at some of the deeper categories because by now, every Red Raider fan is more than aware of the team’s big struggles in 2019 such as pass defense (in which Tech finished third from last).

As we look at these areas, let’s see if there are reasons to believe that the players on the current roster are capable of showing noticeable improvement or whether Matt Wells and his staff have tried to address those weaknesses through their recruiting efforts.  So here are some areas where the Red Raiders are going to have to take a step forward in 2020.