Texas Tech football: Hidden moments from Red Raiders’ win over Mountaineers
A West Virginia punt nearly hits a Red Raider
Unfortunately, we’ve seen plenty of misfortunes strike the Texas Tech special teams already this year. There have been botched onside kick recoveries, muffed punts, and ill-advised kickoff returns all of which have made life far more difficult on the Red Raiders than it should have been.
Against West Virginia, we nearly had another such incident in the kicking game when, near the end of the first half, the Mountaineers punted from their own 45 trailing 14-0.
The punt was terrible. It hit at the Tech 17 and then like a nine-iron checking up on a green, it rolled all the way back out to the Tech 26. In all, WVU would net just 29 yards of field position on the kick.
But disaster nearly struck as the ball came within inches of hitting the foot of Red Raider linebacker Brandon Randle, who had no idea he was near the ball as he was engaged in a block. In fact, it was so close to touching him that WVU players picked up the ball and lobbied for it to be ruled to have touched Randle.
Had this ball taken one more strange sideways roll, it could have easily touched Randle and wound up being West Virginia’s ball. (Though some may argue that Tech would have had a case to make that Randle was blocked into the ball, in which case, it would have remained Tech’s ball. But who wants to leave it up to an official to make the right call?)
The fact that this punt was so poor and the fact that it didn’t hit Randle was important in the overall narrative of this game. That’s because Tech would take the ball and drive 59 yards to set up a Jonathan Garibay field goal that just barely beat the second-quarter buzzer. And again, in a game that was decided by three points, that FG would prove to be rather important, just like the awful punt that proceeded it. A punt that bounced Tech’s way twice.