Texas Tech football: Concerning trends regarding Matt Wells’ career
His recruiting has never been good
Some believe that the only way to fix the Texas Tech football program is by bringing in more and better talent. That’s a logical perspective. But there’s reason to question whether that is something Matt Wells is equipped to do. That’s because he’s never proven to be a top-flight recruiter.
Red Raider fans are well aware of the poor class rankings the program has had on the recruiting trail under the current staff. We give Wells and Co. a pass for the 2019 class given that it was a transition class but since then, nothing has improved. In fact, the program’s recruiting efforts have taken a precipitous drop.
After landing just the No. 62 class in the nation and No. 8 class in the conference in 2019, his 2020 class was ranked just No. 48 overall and No. 7 in the Big 12. But what’s most concerning is that Wells’ current 2021 class sits at just No. 83 in the country and No. 9 in the Big 12.
The worries about Wells as a recruiter are only exacerbated by the fact that he was not a great recruiter at Utah State either. In fact, when comparing what he did there to what his counterparts in the Mountain West were able to accomplish, there’s no reason to feel any better.
We can’t judge his recruiting in Logan based on national rankings because Utah State simply isn’t ever going to score very high in that regard. But we can look at how Wells stacked up to the other teams in his league.
In six years on the job, he never had a class rank higher than 5th in the Mountain West. What’s more, in every year but 2014, Wells’ class ranked 8th or worse in the 12-team conference.
At Tech, Wells has doubled-down on the transfer market and it has yielded some successes like Zech McPhearson, Tyree Wilson, RJ Turner, and Jacob Morgenstern. But it seems like the staff is relying too heavily on that avenue of talent acquisition and forsaking the long-term good of the program by going light on high school talent and that’s a concerning strategy. But perhaps that’s what Wells feels he has to do after the lack of success he’s had when it comes to the traditional recruiting avenues.