Texas Tech football: RBs, O-line deserve game balls for victory over Cougars

It was Tahj time for Texas Tech once again

Tahj Brooks is playing the best football of his Red Raider career.  That continued on Saturday with a 106-yard, two-TD performance.

It’s his third 100-yard game in a row after he was underutilized in the first two games of the season.  Now, there is no question who Tech’s best offensive weapon is.

With backup QB Behren Morton now assuming the role of QB1 with Tyler Shough likely lost for the year, Tech’s ground game will be more important than ever and Brooks will see plenty of the football.  So far, it doesn’t appear that an increased workload is hindering his productivity.

In the last three games, he’s carried the ball an average of 22 times.  His yards-per-carry in that stretch has been 6.2.  That’s also his average for the entire season.

Coming into this season, he’d never had a game with more than 20 carries.  Now, he’s got two in a row with a 19-carry game preceding those.  Will that workload prove to be detrimental as the season wears on?  Only time will tell but it does appear that he’s growing stronger with each passing week.

"“He is really really driven right now,” McGuire said.  “He understands our run game.  I think he’s running like a 225-pound back.  That’s something that I remind him of all the time because he has such great vision and great feet…but sometimes, you just gotta get the dirty yards and get behind your pads.”"

What was impressive about Brooks’ day was that he often picked up yards when everyone in the stadium knew he was going to get the ball.  With Shough out and Morton limited with a shoulder injury, it was no secret that it would be Tahj time in Lubbock this weekend.

However, Houston could do little to stop that plan of attack.  Now, it isn’t as if the Cougars have been great in that regard this year.

Allowing 144.7 yards per game on the ground entering the day, they had the 4th-worst run defense in the conference.  That’s only going to drop after letting Tech run for 239 on Saturday.

Still, Houston was geared up to try to slow Brooks and they couldn’t accomplish that goal.  Brooks began the weekend as the third-leading rusher in the Big 12 and he could climb to the top of that list as the featured option of the Red Raider offense moving forward.  That’s because, as we saw Saturday, even when everyone knows he’s getting the ball, he still finds a way to pick up yards in chunks.