Texas Tech football: Loss to OU raises more doubts about Matt Wells and Co.

The Texas Tech football team’s 62-28 loss to Oklahoma on Saturday was a sobering reminder of just how far behind the Big 12’s elite programs the Red Raiders are and raise the same old questions about Matt Wells.

In the game of football, sometimes what happens isn’t as important as how it happens.  That was the case with the Texas Tech football team’s 34-point loss to Oklahoma on Saturday night.

The unavoidable truth is that Tech isn’t supposed to beat the Sooners.  After all, Lincoln Riley’s team was more than a two-touchdown favorite.

But the expectation was that the Red Raiders were going to at least put up a representative effort on their home turf.  However, they didn’t and now, we are back to square one when it comes to the rebuilding efforts of head coach Matt Wells and his staff.

Last week, it appeared that the Red Raiders had gained a bit of momentum by securing a 34-27 victory over a West Virginia team that entered the game 3-1 and sporting the nation’s top statistical defense.  Though that win put the Red Raiders at just 2-3 on the year, it did stop a three-game losing streak and give us some hope that the switch to QB Henry Colombi was going to spark Tech to a strong finish to the year.

While only the most optimistic of fans expected that triumph to lead to an upset of the Sooners on Saturday night, we did expect it to be a springboard to better play.  But what we saw in Tech’s latest debacle under Matt Wells was one of the worst performances in the recent history of the program…and that says quite a bit.

In fact, in almost every aspect of the game, the Red Raiders were abysmal.  It began with penalties, of which Wells’ team incurred 11 for 85 yards.  Entering the game, Tech had been assessed a total of just seven penalties in the last two games.  But by the end of the first quarter, on Saturday night, Tech had already been flagged eight times for 42 yards including a rare unsportsmanlike conduct foul levied against Wells.

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Then there were the turnovers.  The Red Raiders gave the ball away three times with all three coming from QB Henry Colombi.

A week after he didn’t turn the ball over once in his first career start against the Mountaineers, he was picked off twice in the first quarter with both coming on deflected passes that he threw behind his intended targets, both of whom could only get their hands on the ball enough to tip it into the air allowing OU linebacker Tre Norwood to pick both out of the air.

OU quickly turned those two changes of possession into 14 points to turn what was once a 7-0 lead into a 28-7 first-quarter deficit.  What’s more, during that 28-0 OU run, Tech also gave the ball away on downs.

We could go on and on.  Tech was just 4-11 on third down.  Tech allowed OU to rush for 213 yards and six TDs.  Colombi was just 13-25 passing for 209 yards.

But why belabor the point.  Everyone who watched this game could clearly see just how poor the Red Raiders played after the game’s first two possessions.

What’s worth discussing is what this game means to the big picture for this program.  Tech had an opportunity to put its best foot forward against the premier program in the conference in a home night game on national television to prove that there was life in Red Raider football.  But instead, all we were treated to was a cavalcade of penalties, mistakes, missed assignments, and turnovers in a game that was decided after the first 15 minutes.

Once again, when this program had an opportunity to make a statement against a premier program, Wells and Co. fell flat on their face and that is concerning.

Tech has now faced five of the top six teams in the Big 12 standings and has gone 1-4 in those games.  And that’s a sign that this program is nowhere near being competitive in the second year of the Wells era.  Wins over West Virginia are nice but to be taken seriously in the conference, Wells has to start beating teams that truly matter, and when faced with an opportunity to do that in his home stadium, his team was outclassed, outcoached, and outcompeted.

Now, the Red Raiders turn their attention to the final four games of the season with more questions than answers.  There’s reason to wonder if any QB on the roster is capable of playing winning football consistently in the Big 12.  There’s reason to wonder if this team has the schematics in place to compete in the Big 12 on either side of the ball.  There’s reason to wonder if this team has the discipline to be able to stay in games.

But most of all, we once again have serious reason to wonder if Wells can be the man to get the Red Raiders back to a place where a Saturday night in Lubbock is fun again and not the type of house of horrors we witnessed against the Sooners on what had to be the most terrifying Halloween slaughter that any Red Raider fan has seen in quite some time.