Texas Tech football: Where the Red Raiders got worse this year

The Texas Tech football team may have ended 2020 with a higher winning percentage than last year’s team but in some key areas of the game, the Red Raiders actually performed worse this fall.

It’s remarkable how similar the 2019 and 2020 Texas Tech football seasons were.  That’s not good news for Red Raider fans as Tech was unable to take any significant steps forward as a program by failing to improve upon last year’s meager win total.

Of course, the Red Raiders played two fewer games in 2020 than they would have played had the schedule not been altered by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Therefore, their four wins this fall are technically an improvement if you are looking at the overall winning percentage (.400 this year vs. .333 last year).

But no one is viewing this year as a step forward.  In fact, given that it was year-two of the Matt Wells experiment but Tech essentially remained mired in the same filth and muck that it wallowed in last year, 2020 could actually be seen as a worse season than 2019, which was a transition year.

Still, when you look at the two seasons Wells has put together, it’s fascinating to think about how they are almost mirror images of each other.  Let’s start with the wins.

First of all, the combined winning percentage of the teams the Red Raiders defeated was less than stellar in both seasons.  So far in 2020, the three FBS teams Tech beat have a combined record of 7-19 (.269).  Meanwhile, the three FBS teams Tech beat in 2019 had a combined record of just 14-23 (.378).

What’s more, in each season, the Red Raiders beat only one team with a winning record at the time they played.  Last year, it was Oklahoma State, which came into the game it lost to Tech 4-1 while this season, West Virginia was 3-1 when they coughed one up in Lubbock.

On the other side of the ledger, there are similarities in the losses from each of the last two seasons.  First of all, Tech dropped an OT game that it should have won in each season.  A year ago, it was the 33-30 loss at Baylor, and this year, it was the 63-56 loss in Lubbock to the Longhorns, both games the Red Raiders led in the final minute of play.

Fourth-quarter ineptness was an issue in both seasons as well. Whereas Tech lost six games in 2019 that were at one point in the final period a one-score contest, this year, the same was true of the Kansas State, and Oklahoma State games while the TCU game would have been a one-score game late had Tech managed to make the now infamous second-down field goal that Matt Wells called for.

Thus, no one will blame Red Raider football fans for feeling like we are in some type of Groundhog Day scenario.  And that’s why the calls for Wells’ job have grown so loud over the past few weeks.

What’s more, those clambering for change are quick to point out that this year’s team seemed to regress in some key areas.  So let’s take a look at four statistical areas in which the 2020 Red Raiders took a step in the wrong direction.