Texas Tech football: Red Raiders must be better in 4th quarter this season

Time of possession was against the Red Raiders

When a team has a depth problem on defense, the best way to combat that weakness is to keep the defense off of the field.  But Tech wasn’t able to do that in the fourth quarter last year.

In all, the Red Raiders had the ball just 39.1% of the time last season in the final period.  That’s just under six minutes meaning that the defense had to play far too much football when at its most tired.  Nationally, only five teams had the ball for a smaller percentage of the time in the fourth quarter.

The best example came against Arizona when Tech entered the fourth quarter trailing the Wildcats just 20-14.  In that game, there were four possessions, two by each team.  Tech’s two possessions totaled just 5:36 of game time while Arizona had the ball 9:34.

Against Baylor, a game that went to two OTs, Tech had two drives in the final quarter.  The total amount of time that ran off the clock in those two possessions was just 5:30.

We could go down the list of all of last season’s losses but the point is clear, Tech has to protect its defense better in the fourth quarter.

In the spread offense era of the game, we’ve been led to believe that if we consider time of possession a valuable stat, we are antiquated football fans.  But that stat still has its place in the game, especially when trying to grind out close victories.  So next, let’s look at how Tech can improve in that aspect of the game.