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

Texas Tech was awful in the red zone.

When you can’t score with consistency inside the 20, you are destined to be a bad team.  That is, unless you have the firepower to score from anywhere on the field and you strike from long distance with regularity.

We’ve already discussed how this year’s passing attack was as impotent as it has been in 21 seasons, so it was obvious that Tech needed to be efficient in the red zone.  But that wasn’t what Wells’ team was in 2020.  In fact, this year’s team was far worse inside the 20 than was last year’s team.

Scoring just 75.8% of the time in the red zone, the Red Raiders were worst in the Big 12 and no. 102 in the nation this year.  And much of that has to do with turnovers and kicking woes.

First, the turnovers, which we just analyzed.  Of the 19 giveaways Tech had this year, three came inside the 20 with all three being interceptions.

But even more damaging to the team’s red zone percentage was the failures of the kicking game.  Five times this season, the Red Raiders missed a FG to end a drive that had crossed the opponent’s 20.  That included four misses by Trey Wolff.

Last year, Wolff was 20-22 on field goals.  That helped push his team to no. 37 in the nation in red-zone offense at 88.2% success.

But this year, he and Jonathan Garibay were not nearly as reliable and their kicking woes inside the 20 were huge reasons why Tech was far worse in the red zone this fall.  Certainly, the Red Raiders could have used all those missed points in a four-win season.