Saturday in Stillwater, a flurry of second-half mistakes cost the Red Raiders in a 50-44 loss to Oklahoma State.
If there was a manual on how to lose games against good teams, it would be authored by Matt Wells and the Texas Tech football program. Unfortunately, the Red Raiders wrote another potential chapter for that dreadful manuscript Saturday in Stillwater and it was the head coach that penned the game’s defining paragraph.
After a 43-yard TD reception by Erik Ezukanma gave Tech a 24-21 lead in the middle of the 3rd quarter, Tech simply imploded. And the catalyst was yet another Matt Wells head coaching gaffe.
On the kickoff after Ezukanma’s score, Wells called for an onside kick, which was improperly executed allowing Jason Taylor II of the Cowboys to return it for a TD. Tech would never lead again in the game.
The avalanche of blunders would continue on Tech’s ensuing possession. Alan Bowman would put the Red Raiders further in a hole by throwing a pick-six to Tre Sterling to increase the OSU lead to 34-24. It was yet another instance in which Bowman simply threw to his first option without reading the defense and it resulted in his second-straight game with an INT returned for a TD.
Though the Red Raiders would answer with a 70-yard TD run by Xavier White to cut the OSU lead to 34-31, more mistakes would extinguish any hope of a comeback. With Tech trailing 41-31, the Red Raiders would turn the ball over on downs. Then, after another OSU TD put the game out of reach at 48-31, Alan Bowman would be flagged for intentional grounding in the endzone resulting in a safety.
Tech would score some garbage-time TDs to make the score more respectable but the Red Raiders were unable to climb out of the pit that their head coach put them in. And do not think that the cavalcade of errors that befell Tech in the second half didn’t stem from the ill-fated onside kick.
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This loss, like so many others this year, falls directly at the feet of Matt Wells. He continually makes head-scratching in-game decisions that defy all common sense and his team simply isn’t good enough to overcome their head coach’s brainlessness.
There was no need for Tech to try the onside kick. Typically, coaches resort to that strategy when their defense can’t seem to make a stop. However, at the time of Saturday’s onside, Tech had come up with five-straight stops of the OSU offense to seize momentum away from the home team.
It’s just the latest instance of Wells bungling a decision and costing his team a shot at coming away with a much-needed win over a quality opponent.
In the year’s second game, he called for a “sky kick” against Texas which was not executed properly, and which gave UT perfect field position from which to launch a 15-point comeback in the final three minutes of the game.
There was the decision against TCU to kick a FG on second down trailing by 11 points in the fourth quarter, a kick that was missed of course. At that moment in the game, the Red Raider offense had driven the ball over fifty yards on the previous four plays and was primed to reach the endzone as the Frogs were on their heels but Wells killed that momentum with his ill-advised decision.
Those are just the two most infamous blunders of Wells’ season and Saturday’s onside kick has to join that group as being one of the worst.
Most coaches continually preach about limiting mistakes, especially those of the mental variety. But what does a program do when it is the head coach whose mental mistakes constantly put his team in negative situations? What they don’t do is beat ranked teams on the road.