Texas Tech football: Matt Wells’ “sky kick” decision indefensible

Texas Tech football head coach Matt Wells’ decision to try a “sky kick” in the fourth quarter cost his team a much-needed top-10 victory.

After the Houston Baptist game, we talked about Matt Wells’ struggles when it comes to situational football. Now, we have another data point to add to that discussion and it is one of the most egregious coaching mistakes in Texas Tech football history.

With the Red Raiders leading 56-41 with just 3:13 to play in the game after SaRodorick Thomspon’s exhilarating 75-yard TD run, Wells decided to go with a kickoff that he would later refer to as a “sky kick” instead of simply kicking the ball deep. The result was that UT got the ball at its own 41-yard line, 16 yards further upfield than they would have had the ball been kicked into the endzone for a touchback.

Four plays later, Texas was in the endzone and the epic Red Raider collapse was underway. It was an inexcusable and unfathomable decision on Wells’ part and one that fans won’t soon forget about.

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Wells said in his postgame press conference that his kicker Trey Wolff simply “didn’t hit it right” leaving us to assume that the kick was meant to travel more than the 20 yards in the air that it eventually traversed. But a coach who has been in the game as long as Wells has should know that asking players to do something unusual in critical moments often leads to mistakes. That’s what happened with Wolff on this play and it set Texas up for an improbable comeback, one that broke the hearts of Red Raider fans while also providing fuel for the ever-growing anti-Wells faction.

Wells coached scared in that moment. He was afraid to give UT kick returner D’Shawn Jamison a second chance at a nice return. In the first quarter, the Longhorn defensive back took Tech’s second kickoff of the game back to the UT 42-yard line, and apparently, that stuck with Wells the remainder of the day.

For his career, Jamison has averaged 18 yards per kickoff return. He has one TD return, a 98-yarder last season. Thus, he isn’t a returner to be taken lightly.

But the likelihood that he would have taken back another kick 42 yards (or more) was rather remote. And if Tech can’t cover kicks any better than that, they deserve to lose games anyway.

What’s more, if Wolff can’t kick the ball into the endzone in that situation, he shouldn’t be kicking in the Big 12. And before you point out that the wind was blowing out of the south and into Wolff’s face at that point, keep in mind that, according to the Texas Tech radio broadcast crew (who I listen to as I watch each game), the wind had significantly died down in the fourth quarter and was not much of a factor at that point in the game.

Still, Wells played it safe. And he played it wrong. There’s no defending that decision.

It’s the second-straight game that he made an awful choice in the kicking game. In week one, he decided to forego a short FG try in the closing minutes that would have put his team ahead 11 points. Instead, he rolled the dice on 4th-and-1 from inside the 5-yard line and his gamble proved unwise.

Fortunately for him, that decision didn’t cause him to lose the game, rather, just lose points in the court of public opinion. But his decision to try the ill-fated “sky kick” against Texas did cost his team the Saturday’s game.

Sure, Tech still should have won. Had Zech McPhearson been able to corral the UT onside kick, Tech would have won.

But Wells continues to fail at one of the most critical aspects of his job, decision-making, and this time, it bit him and his team in the collective rear end. Meanwhile, his popularity among the fan base continues to sink to levels that we once thought only Tommy Tuberville could achieve.