Texas Tech football: Position group grades for Red Raiders vs. Kansas State
The Texas Tech football team dropped Saturday’s contest with Kansas State so let’s hand out our position group grades.
The Texas Tech football team now sits at 1-2 on the season after falling to Kansas State 31-21 on Saturday afternoon. It’s the first time since 1999 that the Red Raiders have opened the season 1-2.
That year, it was a huge injury that caused Spike Dykes’ team to get off to a slow start. Losing all-Big 12 running back Ricky Williams to a blown-out knee in the season opener against Arizona State, Tech dropped that contest to the Sun Devils and was upset by North Texas in week three. Sandwiched in between was a 38-17 win over Louisiana Lafayette.
Since then, Tech has gone at worst 2-1 in every season until the current one. Of course, the odd 2020 schedule has required the Red Raiders to play two conference foes in the first three games of the year, something that’s never happened before.
Speaking of Big 12 play, the Red Raiders continue to struggle when trying to come up with wins in league play. In fact, Tech is now just 5-15 in the conference since the start of the 2018 season. That includes a mark of 2-14 in the last 16 Big 12 games.
What’s more, at just 2-9 against conference opponents, Matt Wells is off to a historically poor start. In fact, you have to go back to when Jerry Moore began 1-9-1 in Southwest Conference play to find a worse start in conference action by a Texas Tech football coach.
The good news is that the Red Raiders still have time in 2020 to turn the ship around with 70% of the schedule still left to be played. However, in order for year-two of the Wells era to be salvaged, the Red Raiders are going to have to elevate their play across the board.
While there were some bright spots on Saturday, Tech couldn’t make enough plays to win in what was yet another all-too-expected Big 12 failure. With that being said, let’s hand out our position group grades.
Special teams: F
We will start with the easiest position group to grade, the special teams. Because of two missed field goals and a blocked punt that led to seven K-State points, the Red Raiders earned an “F” in the kicking game and that’s only because there’s nothing lower on this scale to give them.
I don’t know what’s happened to kicker Trey Wolff but he has started the year 0-3 on FG attempts. That’s shocking after he went 20-22 last year as a redshirt freshman. Much like a golfer who loses his putting touch, it appears that Wolff has a case of the “yips”.
Meanwhile, Tech can’t figure out how in the world to go through an entire game without having a punt blocked. When Austin McNamara‘s first punt of the KSU game was blocked, it marked the second-straight week that Tech’s opponent had done so, and in each game, you would point to the blocked punts as a reason for Tech’s loss.
In the end, Tech cost itself 13 points through it’s kicking game failures. That proved to be rather significant in a game that was decided by 10 points. Thus, giving the special teams an “F” almost feels a bit too generous.