Texas Tech football: 5 worst moments of 2020 season
Now that the 2020 Texas Tech football season has been put out of its misery, let’s look back at the five worst moments from a season that was a huge disappointment.
Thankfully, 2020 has entered its final week. The year that we all would like to forget is on the verge of transitioning from present reality to memory.
For Texas Tech football, this was also a year that the program would like to quickly turn the page on. That’s because what started with hope for an improvement in head coach Matt Wells’ second season in charge ended with Wells and his AD Kirby Hocutt having to fend off a coup from influential donors who nearly had the ammunition to oust both from their current positions.
Certainly, no one expected the most exciting moment of this season to be a backroom battle over the fate of a head coach who had just completed his second act. But because his team gave us only four wins for the second-straight season, Wells failed to deliver much in the way of intrigue this year until it came time for his job status to be questioned.
On the field, Tech gave us little to be excited about. The offense featured its worst passing attack of the post-Spike Dykes era, the defense finished just 98th nationally in a year when Big 12 offenses were far less potent as a collective, and the special teams were a disaster.
So now that the Christmas presents have been opened and the merriment of the season has started its natural decline, let’s put the 2020 Texas Tech football season out to pasture in the only fitting way, by looking at the five worst moments from a season which saw the product on the field come far to close to mirroring the disappointment and frustration that this unprecedented calendar year gave our entire world.
No. 5: The turnover spree vs. Oklahoma
No one in their right mind expected the Red Raiders to beat Oklahoma when the Sooners came to Lubbock on Halloween. But what we wanted to see was a competitive effort against the eventual Big 12 champions because that would have been a sign that this program was making strides toward respectability.
But the first-half spree of turnovers by the home team ended any hope of a competitive game and set the stage for another ugly blowout loss against the only blue-blood program the conference boasts.
Remember that Tech actually began this game in perfect fashion. Taking the opening kickoff, the Red Raiders scored on a 5-yard SaRodorick Thompson TD run for a 7-0 lead. Then, Tech forced the Sooners to punt on their opening drive of the game.
Unfortunately, on Tech’s third possession, with the game knotted at seven, the first in an avalanche of turnovers would begin to burry Wells’ team.
It began with a Henry Colombi interception. On first down from the Tech 14, Colombi threw a pass behind inside receiver KeSean Carter who got a hand on it and tipped it up into the air where the Sooners would pick it off and return it to the nine. Two plays later, the Sooners would take the lead for good.
The next drive wouldn’t end in an official turnover but Tech would give the ball up at its own 49 when a 4th-and-2 rushing attempt was stuffed. Three plays later, OU would score to go up 21-7.
On the ensuing possession, Colombi would be picked off again. It was another deflected pass, this time off the shoulder pads of inside receiver Myles Price, but one that Colombi shared blame in as he put far too much pace on the ball for a short slant route. Five plays later, it was 28-7 OU and the night had lost all intrigue.
It was at this moment in a game that would end 62-28 in favor of the visitors when Tech fans once again realized just how far behind the elite teams in the nation that our program is. It was a painful reminder that Texas Tech football is lightyears away from being able to compete with elite foes and that point was hammered home during the turnover parade that saw OU take a tie game and turn it into a laugher. And being as the laughing as once again being done at our expense, this was the fifth-worst moment of the 2020 season.