1,962 receiving yards in a season
In the 2007 season, redshirt freshman Michael Crabtree took the college football world by storm and set the Texas Tech football record for receiving yards in a season with 1,962. It’s hard to imagine anyone coming anywhere close to surpassing that total.
Additionally, the Dallas native also set school records for receptions (134) and touchdowns (22) that season on his way to earning the first of his two-consecutive Biletnikoff Awards. But it feels like there’s an outside chance that those numbers could eventually be challenged, especially if the passing game continues to dominate the football landscape.
However, 1,962 yards in one season is insane. That total is good for No. 3 in NCAA history and the most since Trevor Insley of Nevada set the NCAA record in 1999 with 2,060 receiving yards.
Crabtree’s 2007 season is 533 yards ahead of any other Red Raider (Keke Coutee is second with 1,429 in 2017). That would mean that to equal Crabtree, Coutee would have needed to average 41 more yards per game than he did in what was a fantastic season in its own right. Averaging 147.9 yards per game in his record-setting season, Crabtree put up 33 yards per game more than Coutee in 2017.
We may also be entering an era where coaches are not as prone to throwing the ball as often as Crabtree’s head coach, Mike Leach, is apt to do. While the new Mississippi State coach will likely always stick to his plan of throwing the ball as often as possible, many play-callers are starting to ease back towards a more balanced attack as defenses start to utilize eight-man coverage schemes to slow down the spread passing attack.
In 2007, the Red Raiders threw the ball 762 times, 231 more passes that the 2019 Red Raiders threw. And Crabtree’s 2007 yardage total was more than one hundred yards greater than the combined total of Tech’s three leading receivers combined for last fall. What’s more, 1,962 yards is more than Tech’s two top receivers managed as a duo in the 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2015 seasons. In other words, it seems tough to imagine anyone coming close to that number anytime soon.