Texas Tech football: Red Raiders make final 5 for top-50 safety

Lyrik Rawls, a 3-star safety from Marshall, Texas has released his final five schools and the Texas Tech football program has made the cut along with some familiar foes.

It’s no secret that the Texas Tech football program desperately needs to add some quality defensive backs to the 2021 class as there are none currently committed.  One name that seems to be atop head coach Matt Wells’ wish list is Lyrik Rawls and recently, he included the Red Raiders in his top 5 schools.

Releasing his list on Twitter, he also has Oklahoma State, Kansas, Houston, and TCU as the programs he is still considering.  Thus, this is a name that Red Raider fans may hear rather often over the next few years, even if he doesn’t decide to call Lubbock home.

Rated by the 247Sports composite rankings as a 3-star prospect, he’s the No. 39 safety in America and the No. 76 player in Texas.  That’s the type of talent Tech’s current recruiting class desperately needs to begin adding.

Safety is a position Tech must address in this recruiting cycle.  That’s because, the program will be losing both players projected to start at that position whenever this season begins, Ja’Marcus Ingram and Eric Monroe, both of whom arrived in Lubbock as grad transfers.

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Additionally, Tech will see backup safety Thomas Leggett exhaust his eligibility after this season as well.  Thus, it will mean that from 2018-20, Tech will have seen the following safeties graduate: Jah’Shawn Johnson, Vaughnte Dorsey, and John Bonney (2018), Douglas Coleman (2019), and the three 2020 seniors mentioned above.

What’s more, the fact that Tech has moved 2019 starter, Adrian Frye, back to corner, it will mean the program will have a different pair of starting safeties for four-straight seasons when you count 2021 and will go at least five years between seeing even one safety start more than one season in a row (assuming that a new starter doesn’t emerge during the course of the 2020 season).

But adding quality at the position through the high school ranks has not been easy in recent years.  In 2019, Tech did not sign a H.S. safety but has since moved Dadrion Taylor, who played RB exclusively in high school, to safety after he played corner as a true freshman.

In 2018, the only safety Tech added to the roster was JUCO S Adrien Cross who is no longer with the program.  The 2017 class featured Dorsey and Quincy Addison, the latter of who is also not with the program anymore.

Thus, bringing a player like Rawls into the mix would be a huge addition to this class and to the program as a whole.  The 6-foot-1, 180-pounder was a second-team all-state selection last fall and hopefully, he decided to become a Red Raider because it’s time that Tech starts to bring quality HS safeties into the program once again.