The good news for the Texas Tech football team is that Saturday night's 33-10 win over ACU was far less dramatic than the 52-51 OT win that head coach Joey McGuire's team secured over the Wildcats to kick off the 2024 season. The bad news, though, was that a familiar problem from a season ago cast a cloud of concern over the evening's proceedings.
In 2025, Tech was one of the least effective teams in the nation when it came to scoring touchdowns in the red zone, doing so on only 55.5% of its opportunities (good for just 98th in the nation). In the 2026 opener, the Red Raiders were even worse than that by scoring only two TDs on five trips inside the ACU 20.
The evening began with a 14-yard TD run by Quentin Joyner to stake Tech to a 7-0 lead after one possession. Then, J'Koby Williams found paydirt on a five-yard run to make the score 14-0. At that point, it appeared that the Red Raiders were on their way to a dominant win.
After that, though, the Red Raiders could not figure out how to find the end zone when inside the 20. That was a disappointing turn of events for a team that entered the season knowing that it must be more efficient at scoring TDs when entering the red zone than a year ago.
While one game in a season does not make for a trend, the fact that this issue has so far carried over from 2025 has Red Raider fans frustrated. What's more, many are wondering how a team with as much of a talent advantage over an opponent like ACU as Tech has can't impose its will near the goal line.
It wasn't as if Tech couldn't move the ball. The Red Raiders finished with 471 yards of offense as they marched up and down the field until they got to the red zone. But after that, they sputtered time and time again.
There's no doubt that the Red Raiders played it safe and kept it vanilla on offense. Part of the reason for that was to protect QB Will Hammond from injury as he made his first start since tearing a ligament in his right knee late last October. The other reason was likely to keep from showing future opponents too much of what the Red Raiders have up their sleeve.
Still, an offense with such playmakers as Terrance Carter Jr., Coy Eakin, Micah Hudson, and a group of running backs that are expected to be perhaps the best collective in the nation can't do whatever it wants against an FCS opponent, even when implementing the most basic of game plans.
When the competition gets tougher, as it will in the next two weeks, Tech can ill afford to get complacent when there are opportunities to put seven points on the board instead of three. That didn't cost Tech in 2025 because there was only one game decided by single digits. However, if the Red Raiders want to win a national title, tight games must be won, and to do that, they must be more successful when inside the opponent's 20.
For at least one game, Tech fans have to consider that the Red Raiders were using a new starting QB and making their season debut before starting to claim that the sky is falling. However, the fact that one of last season's only concerns has carried over into this year, even for one game, is unsettling for certain.
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