Texas Tech football: 5 reasons Red Raiders will be better in 2022

The QB room is stacked with talent

Moving to the other side of the ball, Tech is in great shape at quarterback, which has been a position of weakness for the last five seasons.

Most importantly is the fact that Tech has unprecedented depth at QB this season.  That’s something that has been missing from the program for far too long.

Tech has suffered numerous catastropic injuries at QB in recent years.  And in almost every case, the backups that have been thrust into action were not good enough to win consistently in the Big 12.

When Alan Bowman went down with injuries in both 2018 and 2019, Tech had to turn to Jett Duffey and Henry Colombi, neither of whom were even average Big 12 quarterbacks.  Again, last season, Colombi was the first option after Tyler Shough was lost for the season in week four.  Remember that Colombi had the opportunity to start multiple games in each of the past two seasons and he could not hold down the job in either as in both seasons, he was benched after just a few games at the helm.

What’s more, in the one season since 2016 when Tech had its starter play all 12 games (2017), that starter (Nic Shimonek) proved to be below average by this program’s standards.  Truly, Texas Tech has not had standout play at the QB spot since the Mahomes era and that’s been a huge reason for this program’s struggles.

This year, Tech will have one of three quality palyers taking the first-team snaps (Shough, Donovan Smith, or Behren Morton).  Any of those three will be the best option this program has rolled out since Pat Mahomes in 2016.  And should the starter go down, there should not be such a dropoff in quality as we have seen in the past few seasons.  That will be a huge reason why this year’s team should be better.