Wreck'Em Red
Fansided

Texas Tech football: Game by game predictions for 2020 season

By Matthew Conner

LUBBOCK, TX - NOVEMBER 03: Texas Tech Red Raider mascot "Masked Rider (Lyndi Starr) and Cody (horse) lead the team onto the field before the game against the Oklahoma Sooners on November 3, 2018 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. Oklahoma defeated Texas Tech 51-46. (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TX - NOVEMBER 03: Texas Tech Red Raider mascot "Masked Rider (Lyndi Starr) and Cody (horse) lead the team onto the field before the game against the Oklahoma Sooners on November 3, 2018 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. Oklahoma defeated Texas Tech 51-46. (Photo by John Weast/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 11
Next
The sun sets to the southwest behind Jones AT&T Stadium before the college football game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Kansas State Wildcats on November 23, 2019, in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
The sun sets to the southwest behind Jones AT&T Stadium before the college football game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Kansas State Wildcats on November 23, 2019, in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images) /

Today, the Texas Tech football team kicks off the 2020 season so let’s take a stab at predicting every game on the schedule.

Texas Tech begins season 96 of football today when Houston Baptist comes to Lubbock for a 7 p..m kickoff.  And never has the return of Red Raider football been more welcomed and more needed than in 2020.

Overall, the Red Raiders have a 571-458-32 record. That’s good for a .553 winning percentage which is 60th best in the country according to Winsipedia.com  

But of course, the program has been trending in the wrong direction in the last decade.  Tech has produced just four winning records since 2010 and only three bowl wins in that time.

To get the ship righted though, something that hasn’t happened since 2009 will have to come to pass.  With nine of ten games on this year’s schedule to be against Big 12 opponents, if the Red Raiders are going to put together their first winning season since 2015, they are going to have to have a winning record in Big 12 play for the first time since Mike Leach’s final year, 2009.  In fact, the Red Raiders have not even won four league games in a season in the last four years.

But at least we can expect a good start to things tonight.  All-time in season openers, the Red Raiders have gone 65-27-3.  And in home openers, the record is 76-17-2.   In fact, the program is currently riding a 20-game winning streak in home-opening contests.

Of course, the current coronavirus pandemic hangs heavy over this year’s opener and casts some concern over the fate of the entire season.  While it seems likely that the Big 12 will fight through as many disruptions as possible to get some semblance of a season completed, we don’t know if a full ten games will take place for the Red Raiders and every other Big 12 team.

Such an abbreviated season was already to be a rarity.  Tech has not played fewer than 11 games since 1969.  Should that number fall into the single digits because of COVID-19, it would mark the first time since Pete Cawthorn’s team went 8-1 in 1933 that fans were not treated to at least 10 Texas Tech football games in the fall.

Of course, making season predictions this year is almost impossible given that any week, a team could be hit by positive COVID-19 tests to key players.  But we will go through this exercise by trying to predict what we think will happen should both teams enter the game at full strength.

So let’s dive into our game-by-game predictions for 2020.  And we will start with what should be the only gimmie on the schedule.

Home/Texas Tech Red Raiders News