Texas Tech football: Joey McGuire is treading water but is that good enough?

How much of the Texas Tech struggles fall at McGuire’s feet?

Ultimately, a head coach is what his record is.  Right now, that means that McGuire is not good enough.  There has been too much invested into this program from a financial perspective for Tech to be just one game above .500.

On the other hand, McGuire inherited a pretty big mess.  The end of the 2021 season, when interim head coach Sonny Cumbie helped get Tech to 7-6 and a bowl win over Leach and Mississippi State helped mask the peril that the program was in when McGuire came aboard.

Don’t forget that Tech had managed just one winning season from 2015-2020 and that lone season, was just one game over .500.  In other words, in the six years before McGuire coached his first game, Tech was just 31-41 overall and a dreadful 17-37 in Big 12 games.

Football is the toughest sport in the NCAA to rebuild and programs that have the type of woeful run that Tech has experienced since the end of the Leach era don’t get resurrected overnight.  That’s especially true when asking a first-time college head coach to be the architect.

Art Briles didn’t get Baylor to a winning record until his third season in Waco (2010) and he didn’t reach 10 wins until year four.  At Oklahoma State, Mike Gundy didn’t surpass seven wins until his fourth year (2008).  Even legendary K-State coach, Bill Snyder, didn’t have a winning season in Manhattan until year three of his tenure (1991).

Also, Wells’ terrible recruiting left McGuire to try to win with a collection of mediocre returners, mid-level transfers, and freshmen who are being asked to play way before they should be put in critical roles.

In other words, McGuire is still trying to sift through the rubble of a program that was in shambles when he arrived and he’s trying to get to a place where things are simply on stable footing.  But on the other hand, he hasn’t been flawless either.