Texas Tech football: Why we should have tapped the breaks on 2023 hype
Texas Tech had a lack of star power heading into 2023
The reality is that stars drive elite teams. Texas Tech has experienced that phenomenon in the past.
For example, the 2008 team, the best Red Raider squad in the “Air Raid” era, was loaded with stars. Most notable were QB Graham Harrell and Biletnikoff Award-winning wide receiver Michael Crabtree.
What’s more, that year, Tech had offensive linemen Louis Vasquez and corner Jamar Wall voted to the preseason all-conference team. Meanwhile, such eventual all-time Red Raider greats as OL Brandon Carter, DT Colby Whitlock, WR Detron Lewis, OL Louis Vasquez, DB Darcel McBath, and DE Brandon Williams were all on that team.
Each of those players either went on to be drafted in the NFL or ended their college careers as some of the best to ever don the Double T. How many players will we say that about from the 2023 roster? Not many.
In fact, is there even one player on this year’s team that we will think of as worthy of inclusion in the Texas Tech Athletics Hall of Fame? Perhaps defensive tackle Jaylon Hutchings? Maybe punter Austin McNamara?
The list of even potential candidates is short. Thus, we have no choice but to conclude that this is a roster comprised of mediocre players across the board.
Rosters like that don’t contend for championships because they have such a small margin for error. When a team is loaded with all-conference talent, it can overwhelm opponents and make up for mistakes such as penalties or turnovers.
This Texas Tech team doesn’t have that type of personnel. Instead, it has to play an almost perfect game just to compete with top-flight teams such as Oregon, much less beat the best teams in the Big 12.
This offseason, Tech was one of the most hyped superstarless teams in the country. That should have been a clue that the expectations were far too high.
Texas Tech won too many close games in 2022
The story of the 2023 season has been close losses for Texas Tech. In fact, all three of this season’s defeats have been by one score.
However, the story was the opposite last fall as the Red Raiders won four one-score games, three in overtime. Thus, we should have known that Tech’s luck was likely to change this fall.
Teams that make a living by winning one-score games in a season almost always revert back to the mean the next year. Sure, that team can win other nip-tuck affairs the following season but to go undefeated in them as Tech did last season is unsustainable.
The reality is that the 2022 team was four plays away from being just 4-8. Had Tech not converted a 4th-and-20 against Houston in overtime, had Texas’ Bijan Robinson not fumbled in overtime in Lubbock two games later, had Tyler Shough not found Baylor Cupp for a late TD on the road at Iowa State, and had Oklahoma kicker Zach Schmidt not missed a 34-yard FG in overtime in Lubbock, the entire tone of the 2022 season might have been different.
Teams that live so dangerously and survive don’t usually have the same fortune in the subsequent season. Rather, it is the teams that dominate their opponents that usually carry their success from one year to another.
Tech wasn’t that type of team in 2022 but we just didn’t want to admit it. We all thought that the success in close games was less good fortune and more about the program’s new attitude under McGuire.
That was foolish thinking. It was the logic of a fan base desperate to believe that the decade-plus of losing football was in the rear-view.
However, the reality is starting to sink in that last year’s 8-5 record was built on the strength of close games that all seemed to go the way of the Red Raiders. Those breaks aren’t falling the same way this year as the football gods are leveling the cosmic scales and we should have expected that to happen.