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Texas Tech football: Concerning trends regarding Matt Wells’ career

By Matthew Conner

Jul 15, 2019; Arlington, TX, USA; Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Matt Wells speaks to the media during Big 12 media days at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Jul 15, 2019; Arlington, TX, USA; Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Matt Wells speaks to the media during Big 12 media days at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /
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LUBBOCK, TEXAS – OCTOBER 05: Head coach Matt Wells of the Texas Tech Red Raiders leaves the field after the college football game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys on October 05, 2019 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TEXAS – OCTOBER 05: Head coach Matt Wells of the Texas Tech Red Raiders leaves the field after the college football game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys on October 05, 2019 at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images) /

He doesn’t win many close games

When you are Texas Tech, you don’t have the type of talent that it takes to overwhelm many opponents.  Thus, you are going to play more than a few close games.

That’s why Red Raider fans are so aware of how this program performs in one-score contests.  And as we know, last year, Tech was 0-4 in such games and they are already 1-1 in 2020.

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But what should terrify us is Matt Wells’ career mark in games decided by seven points or less.  Overall he’s gone just 7-21 in one-score games.

Diving deeper into those games, two of those wins shouldn’t really be counted as victories because they came against Houston Baptist and Southern Utah, a pair of FCS programs.  Meanwhile, two close losses came against Power 5 programs USC and Michigan State.

But the rest of Wells’ one-score games have come against teams that were on equal footing with Wells’ program was in terms of prestige.  Therefore, his overall record is more than a bit troubling.  What’s more, he’s won just two one-score games since the start of the 2016 season.

In all, you can’t blame Texas Tech fans who are skeptical about Wells’ ability to lead this program back to the upper half of the Big 12 and I don’t blame those who are already convinced that he isn’t going to pan out in Lubbock and who are calling for change.

The point of this exercise is not to call for Wells to be removed immediately as doing so would accomplish nothing.  In fact, firing him in the middle of just his second season on campus would set a dangerous precedent for the program and might give potential replacements pause when deciding whether to take this job.

But Wells had better start to show some life before the end of 2020 because if he loses out or wins only one more game (as some analytics suggest might be the case), he could find himself with one of the shortest tenures in Red Raider football history.

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The problem is that I just see far more negative trends than positive ones when looking at his career in its entirety.  That’s why I’ve moved from being in the “wait and see” camp as 2020 opened to being in the camp that has become convinced that Texas Tech football likely isn’t going to reverse its decade-long tailspin until there is a new head coach in place.

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