Jordyn Brooks
On the other side of the football, how great would it have been to have been able to play as middle linebacker Jordyn Brooks? After all, playing as the middle LB is typically what gamers do when playing defense in a video game (though many also like to play as a defensive end).
Brooks was the best Texas Tech linebacker since Zach Thomas and he would have been a stud in the EA Sports game. And how nice would it have been to finally have a dominant defensive player to anchor that side of the ball for Tech in that video game?
Making 20 tackles for loss as a senior, Brooks was a disruptive force and that would have been nice to have on Tech’s side in the video game as well, especially considering that blitzing is such a huge part of the strategy of most gamers.
With 367 career tackles, he ranks 7th in program history. He earned second-team All-American honors as a senior in 2019 and he was a first-round draft pick of the Seattle Seahawks in the 2020 NFL Draft. That made him the first defensive player from Tech to be taken in the first round since defensive lineman Gabe Rivera in 1983.
Of course, video games are all about the offensive side of the ball. But at times, it was frustrating to play as the Red Raiders because of the ineptitude of the defense. While Brooks couldn’t single-handedly make the real-life Red Raider defense an elite unit during his time, his presence in the video game would have been huge for Tech fans because it would have put a star LB in the middle of the defense for fans to play as and that could have made the game far more fun.