Texas Tech football: It is time to fire Keith Patterson

To try to spark some type of change within the Texas Tech football program, Matt Wells should fire defensive coordinator Keith Patterson before the season gets any further away.

Why is defensive coordinator Keith Patterson still employed by Texas Tech? It’s a question that continues to be asked across Raiderland and one that grows more valid with each passing game. Now, the time has come for head coach Matt Wells to give Patterson the ax before this season goes any further into the ditch than it already is.

It isn’t that firing Patterson will cure all the ills that plague this program. It won’t make Trey Wolff start to hit field goals. It won’t sure up the punt protection. And it won’t make the offense more consistent. But a significant move needs to be made in order to spark some type of life back into the Red Raiders and Patterson would be the most logical sacrificial lamb.

Yes, most fans would rather Wells himself be canned. But that isn’t going to happen in the middle of the season and unless Tech loses out this year, it probably won’t happen this offseason given the nearly $10 million buyout he would be owed if he were fired before next season.

Thus, Patterson should be the obvious head on the proverbial chopping block and that move wouldn’t be without merit.

Right now, his defense ranks last in the Big 12 in total defense, pass defense, and pass efficiency defense. What’s more, Tech is in the bottom five in the nation in total defense (493.3 yards per game), pass defense (346.1 yards per game), and scoring defense (42.3 points per game). Those numbers all represent a regression from last year when Patterson’s defense was also one of the worst in the country.

What’s more, the position group Patterson coaches is the most inept on the roster. After coaching linebackers last year, Patterson is now working directly with the safeties and that’s a position group that is absolutely killing this defense.

One play from Saturday’s loss to Kansas State sums up how poorly the safeties have been coached. Just after Texas Tech took a 21-17 lead in the fourth quarter, KSU tight end Briley Moore caught a short pass along the sideline and turned it into a 66-yard gain.

The reason he was able to break off such a huge chunk of yardage is that Texas Tech safety Eric Monroe tried to punch the ball out of Moore’s grasp instead of pushing him out of bounds. While that’s an awful decision by the senior transfer from LSU and certainly not what Patterson would have instructed him to do, it is also a poor reflection on Patterson, who is Monroe’s position coach, because, after all, a coach is responsible for the play of the players that he coaches directly.

But it isn’t just one play that the safeties have failed to make. Against FCS opponent Houston Baptist, both Monroe and Thomas Leggett were repeatedly burned by the speedy Husky receivers. What’s more, in the September 26th collapse against the Texas Longhorns, it was the Red Raider safeties that UT continually attacked in the fourth quarter as they made their 15-point comeback. Heck, quite often this year, Patterson’s safeties haven’t been able to even line up properly before the snap.

Perhaps that’s why his defense has allowed the 5th-most passing plays of any team in the nation of 30 or more yards this season. What’s more, no team in the NCAA has given up as many 60-yard passing plays (5) as have the Red Raiders so far in 2020. That’s a direct result of the failings of Patterson’s safeties as they are supposed to be the last line of defense.

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Meanwhile, there’s no reason to hope anything is going to get better with Patterson in charge. That’s because his history suggests that he’s not capable of fielding even a representative defense while at a Power 5 program. In his six years as a defensive coordinator at a major conference program, he has fielded five defenses that ranked 102nd or worse nationally, and the best defense he ever put together ranked just 83rd overall.

Of course, Red Raider fans remember what life was like when our program went through a string of seven different defensive coordinators in seven years from 2009-15 and that’s not a cycle anyone wants to see repeated. But this program also can’t continue to live with the type of pitiful defensive showings that we’ve endured during the Patterson era.

During the 15 games in which he’s been in charge of the Red Raider defense, nine of those opponents have amassed over 500 yards. What’s more, Arizona came within one yard of reaching that plateau as well.

It is clear that Patterson isn’t the answer at defensive coordinator. He continues to make awful strategic decisions like Saturday’s choice to put 240-pound linebacker Jacob Morgenstern in one-on-one coverage with the speedy KSU running back Deuce Vaughn on the K-State TD pass that sealed the game late in the fourth quarter.

What’s more, his defense has given up fourth-quarter leads against Baylor, Texas, Kansas State, Kansas, and TCU during his tenure. In those five games, the Red Raider offense scored an average of 34.4 points yet that wasn’t enough to cover for Patterson’s defense.

Unfortunately, Matt Wells’ is quickly losing his grip on the 2020 season and something dramatic has to change. But Wells won’t be going anywhere mid-season and no new players are going to be added to the roster.

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What can be done is to shake up the coaching staff to try to find something that will bring about even the slightest hint of improvement. Thus far, Keith Patterson has proven to be incapable of being part of the solution for this program’s defensive woes meaning that there’s no point in continuing to stick with him. We’ve already read this book and we know how it ends…with Texas Tech allowing far too many yards and almost as many points. It’s time to turn the page.

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