Texas Tech football: Matt Wells continues to coach from a place of fear

One key sequence in the Texas Tech football team’s loss to Iowa State proved that Matt Wells was coaching scared against the Cyclones.

There’s been quite a bit of talk about the culture within the Texas Tech football program under Matt Wells lately. A 1-3 start to a season will bring about such discussions. And in Saturday’s 31-15 loss to Iowa State, the second-year head coach missed an opportunity to start to instill a new attitude in his football team because he was scared of what might go wrong. That’s not the mindset that makes for a winning football program.

There was one instance when it became clear that Wells was coaching scared and not coaching to win the game.

With the Red Raiders down 21-7 in the second quarter, they took over possession of the football at their own 20 with 1:18 left in the half and two timeouts to work with. So what did they do? Try to work into scoring position knowing that Iowa State was set to receive the second-half kickoff? No.

Rather, Wells decided to sit on the football and just run out the clock. Tech merely ran the ball twice with Chadarius Townsend and took a 14-point deficit to the locker room.

This was a decision that frustrated many Red Raider fans and one that Wells was asked about in his postgame press conference.

"“We weren’t going to get the first down….” Wells said. “And I didn’t want to put the defense right back out there.”"

Does that response feel to anyone else like Wells and his coaching staff had already given up on this game by the end of the first half? After all, if they had designs on winning this game, they would have attempted to at least pick up one first down and see if they could get some momentum going in order to finally put some offensive points on the board (remember that the first seven Red Raider points came off of a blocked field goal return).

At that point, even if you don’t score, maybe you can start to build some confidence in Alan Bowman and get the offense out of neutral. But Wells simply assumed that there was no feasible way that his team was going to pick up even ten yards.

I don’t care that Tech had managed only three first downs to that point of the game and that Bowman looked completely out of sorts. Just because matters may not be going your way, you don’t simply just give up with over a minute to play in the half and two timeouts.

What type of message does that send to the team, and specifically the offense? And what type of attitude does that instill in your program?

There was a time when Mike Leach used to rally his team by telling them to always “swing your sword” and later, his former quarterback Kliff Kingsbury began his tenure as head coach by preaching that “fortune favors the bold”.

What is Wells’ message? Tuck your tail and head to the locker room?

Additionally, how terrible would it have been to punt the ball back to Iowa State? You were already down 21-7 so would 28-7 have been all that different should a worst-case scenario have unfolded? What’s more, the likelihood that Iowa State would have tried to drive the ball the length of the field again after a Red Raider punt with only a handful of seconds left in the half seems infinitesimal.

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But on the other hand, think about how different the game would have felt had Tech even managed to get just three points to trail by only 11 at the break after being dominated for the entire half. Granted, that would have taken Trew Wolff making a field goal, something he’s yet to do this season.

But you can’t just assume that he’s going to go without a make all season. Rather, you try to put him in a position to help your team win by moving the ball into FG range.

Unless you are Matt Wells that is. Then you make decisions based out of fear because you don’t trust your team.

What’s most concerning is that this is not the first time that he has coached from a position of fear this season. In fact, the first time that he did, it cost Texas Tech a huge win.

Leading Texas 56-41 with just over three minutes to play, Wells feared that the Longhorns would have a long kickoff return to set them up for a quick score to get back into the game. So instead of having Wolff kick the ball deep and trusting his coverage unit, Wells called for a pooch kick which he referred to as a “sky kick”.

The problem is that Wolff didn’t execute the kick properly and he popped it up allowing UT to take over at their own 41. Four plays later, the Longhorns were in the end zone and the Red Raider collapse had begun. And it was accelerated by the fact that Wells made a decision based on fear.

Sure, earlier in that game, he’d made the bold call to try an onside kick and it was successful. But that only makes it all the more maddening that when the game was there to be won, he turned from that mentality and operated out of worry.

Thus, is it any wonder this program continues to lose close games? When the face of the program, the man who sets the tone, believes deep down in his core that bad things are going to happen in what should be just normal situations over the course of a game, why would we expect his players to believe in themselves in the clutch?

Football programs are reflections of their head coach. The personality and attitude of the man in charge are going to permeate every aspect of what happens with the football building and the lockerroom.

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Thus, a coach who is trying to build a winning culture in a program that has been in decline for a decade must make in-game decisions that embolden his team, even if they don’t always work out. Unfortunately, Wells continues to make decisions rooted in fear and they contrast the verbal messages that he sends to the fan base and the culture we assume he is trying to instill in his players. Maybe fortune doesn’t always favor the bold but Wells should know by now that timidity always favors your opponent.

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