Texas Tech football: Red Raiders that might surprise in 2023

One of the biggest opportunities for players to make an impression in fall camp comes via the scrimmages each team conducts.  For the Texas Tech football program, the first scrimmage took place this past weekend and on Monday, head coach Joey McGuire gave his thoughts on how this important practice went.

"“I thought that it was a really physical scrimmage,” he said to the Lubbock media.  “We came out relatively healthy.”"

While health is the main outcome a coach wants to see from a scrimmage, there were some on-field highlights that stood out to the second-year head coach.

"“First part of the scrimmage, the offense was explosive,” McGuire siad.  “The 1s and 2s, they had some huge plays.”"

That is incredibly encouraging given that the offense struggled when it came to making big plays last year.  Sure, offensive coordinator Zach Kittley was able to dial up some timely plays and squeeze the most out of that side of the ball in 2022, especially given the turmoil at the QB spot.  However, when it came to picking up yards in huge chunks, Tech simply wasn’t explosive or athletic enough to do that with much regularity.

That’s one reason why the coaching staff focused on adding speed on that side of the ball, both through the high school recruiting ranks and the transfer portal.  In fact, McGuire has repeatedly claimed that the high school class his program signed this offseason is the fastest in the nation.  How they came to that conclusion is not clear but the point is that the focus of the staff was to increase the all-around speed of the roster.

Additionally, McGuire highlighted a few players that stood out as top performers, and the first player he gushed about might be a name that is not top of mind for most Red Raider fans.  That makes him a perfect starting point for our look at players that might surprise this fall.