In 2022, Joey McGuire took over as the head coach in Lubbock and he brought with him an innovative Air Raid offensive coordinator in Zach Kittley who was the perfect fit for the job based on credentials and where he went to college and who he learned from.
And they had some work to do on the offensive side of things for the Red Raiders.
Looking through the Texas Tech Red Raiders record book and you’ll find plenty of high scoring offenses that were let down a bit by underwhelming defenses. And that was a bit of the case in 2022 as well. It’s a bit of a recurring theme for the Red Raiders since 2000.
But for now, we’re focusing solely on the offenses. And the 2022 offense was a pretty good one. It wasn’t great, at least not by Texas Tech standards, but it was productive. So, let’s take a look at what was (relatively speaking) one of the Red Raiders’ less productive offenses from this century.
Texas Tech football history: Joey McGuire’s first team in Lubbock was solid but far from spectacular on offense
In total, Texas Tech averaged over 300 passing yards per game and just shy of 160 rushing yards per game. Those are solid, respectable numbers for the Red Raiders, who managed to score 34.2 points per game. All of that is pretty decent.
All of that said, it’s worth noting that Texas Tech used three different quarterbacks in 2022 between Donovan Smith, Tyler Shough, and Behren Morton. Combined, they made one solid, effective quarterback who had a bad touchdown to interception ratio. The three combined to throw for 3932 yards and just 26 touchdowns against 18 interceptions.
Oh, and that group only completed a little over 61 percent of its passes.
Texas Tech turned to its special teams on 21 occasions as the Red Raiders needed field goals after being unable to score a touchdown. That’s not great. It’s also not great that Tech averaged just 4.1 yards per carry. There were some issues getting short yardage and scoring touchdowns in the red zone for this group.
And while we're acknowledging the nuanced elements of this offense, we can also acknowledge that the Red Raiders managed to beat eight teams, including No. 25 Houston, No. 22 Texas, Oklahoma, and Ole Miss. Scoring points is fun.