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Texas Tech football: The top 5 Red Raider moments of 2020

By Matthew Conner

Oct 31, 2020; Lubbock, Texas, USA; A Texas Tech Red Raiders football sits on the field before the game against the Oklahoma Sooners at Jones AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 31, 2020; Lubbock, Texas, USA; A Texas Tech Red Raiders football sits on the field before the game against the Oklahoma Sooners at Jones AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports /
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LUBBOCK, TEXAS – OCTOBER 31: Jones AT&T Stadium is pictured before the college football game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Oklahoma Sooners on October 31, 2020 in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
LUBBOCK, TEXAS – OCTOBER 31: Jones AT&T Stadium is pictured before the college football game between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Oklahoma Sooners on October 31, 2020 in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images) /

Though the 2020 Texas Tech football season didn’t quite go as we had hoped, there were some positive moments so let’s countdown the top five.

By now, we’ve all come to grips with the fact that the Texas Tech football program’s 2020 season wasn’t the type of success that we had hoped for.  But perhaps, we should have lowered our expectations.

After all, the theory that the second season in a coaching staff’s tenure will be a step forward simply hasn’t proven true when it comes to Red Raider football.  Rather, most of the coaches the program has had in the modern era have taken a step backward in year two.

Starting with the Jerry Moore era of the 1980’s, only one Red Raider head coach has had a winning record in his second year in charge.  That was Mike Leach, who went 7-5 in 2001 after a 7-6 debut season.

As for Moore, his program was pretty terrible in year two, 1982.   But, coming on the heels of a 1-9-1 season, that 4-6 campaign had to feel oddly like a step in the right direction.  It wasn’t though, as Moore’s third year saw him win just three games.

Spike Dykes wasn’t a huge success in his second season either as his team went just 5-6 in 1988.  That was a disappointment after he guided Tech to a 6-4-1 mark in the previous season.

Following the ultra-successful Leach years was Tommy Tuberville who went 8-5 in his debut season of 2010.  But the next fall, his team would manage to go just 5-7 to become the first Red Raider team since 1992 to have a losing record.

Kliff Kingsbury‘s second year was a huge flop.  After he went 8-5 himself in 2013, the expectations for year two were sky-high given that Davis Webb was back to play QB after ending the previous fall on an upswing.  However, the entire team seemed to regress that year and Tech struggled to a 4-8 mark and by the end of the year, Webb would lose his starting job to a true freshman named Pat Mahomes.

The point is that the second season of a coaching staff is never guaranteed to be a gigantic step forward.  Though Tech fans saw basketball coach Chris Beard and baseball coach Tim Tadlock have huge success in their second seasons on campus, the fact is that it is far tougher to turn around a football program than it is to turn around any other type of program.

But while our expectations were not met, we can’t say that there weren’t a few good moments along the way in 2020.  So let’s countdown the best moments from the just-completed season (don’t worry, we’ll look at the worst soon) and we will begin with a moment that we once would have taken for granted.

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