Joey McGuire somehow defends ill-fated 4th-quarter QB draw vs. TCU

Given how the Texas Tech football team blew yesterday's game against TCU, fans naturally wanted answers from the coaching staff, and specifically Joey McGuire, as to how a 31-14 late-third-quarter lead evaporated into the Fort Worth air. Even more so, Red Raiders everywhere wanted to hear from their head coach about the thinking behind the third-down quarterback draw that resulted in a fumble on Tech's second-to-last possession.

In the end, fans aren't going to be happy with what McGuire had to say. That's because in his postgame remarks, he both defended the decision and even tried to pin the outcome on a poor call by the officials.

“We put it in his hands the entire second half,” McGuire said. “That’s the biggest thing. Will feels terrible and I said ‘Will, there’s going to be so many other plays throughout this game, that’s just gonna be the one that everybody’s gonna see.’ It’s easy to talk about, really, we were trying to get the ball centered, we were in a good position to kick the field goal. We felt like we could pick up some yardage with that play."

Taking those words, at face value, some fans might be able to see the logic behind the play-call. Still, that doesn't take away the fact that it was a poor decision to ask an inexperienced true freshman QB to run the ball in traffic instead of relying on your all-conference running back, Tahj Brooks.

However, what McGuire said next sounded like an excuse as he tried to insinuate that the officials got the fumble recovery call wrong.

"It’s frustrating, I mean, I’ll see it, the frustrating thing was, you see the fumble, they call that it’s down on the field, so you’ve gotta see definitive recovery. It’s gonna be interesting to see that, because from our point of view and our tablets and everything like that, you couldn’t see a definitive recovery other than after it was all over in the pile. We felt like Will had the ball and we’re going to the next play to a field goal.”

Trying to suggest that Tech recovered the fumble is foolish. Any neutral observer would say that TCU was the team that got on the loose ball. So, for McGuire to suggest that his team was wronged feels like an attempt at skirting the responsibility for an awful decision.

Later in the press conference, McGuire was asked if he had any regrets about not giving the ball to Brooks on that play and he doubled down on his insistence that the QB draw was a smart choice.

"I mean, you know, of course, again, hindsight," he said. "But you go back, I mean. [Hammond}, he got, I mean, he pulled the ball and got us down there, got a first down. I mean, he had run the ball throughout the game. You know and so you look and you go like, yeah, and we felt like it was just a safe play, we felt like that we're going to get a good kick from there and have to play defense and they did a great job of knocking the ball out."

It shouldn't have mattered that Hammond had run for a first down earlier on the drive or even that he'd run for a touchdown earlier in the game. Those two plays were on zone reads where he pulled the ball away from the running back and kept it as he ran around the edge of the defense where there were few defenders.

However, asking Hammond to run a draw into the teeth of the TCU defense is an entirely different proposition. First of all, there is no deception on a QB draw. The defenders don't have to account for the possibility of the ball going to the running back and they can focus on putting a lick on the QB.

Second, the draw play asks the QB to take the ball right into the middle of the defense instead of running to the boundary. On a draw play, Hammond must navigate a busy swath of real estate where there are linebackers and safeties waiting to deliver a big hit and in the end, his inexperience in such situations was evident as he carried the ball a bit loosely and tried to spin out of a tackle leading directly to the big hit that jarred the ball loose.

Simply put, there is no way McGuire or offensive coordinator Zach Kittley can justify asking Hammond to carry the ball in traffic with the game on the line instead of relying on Brooks. Even the most novice of football fans knows that was a terrible idea.

What should still have Texas Tech fans fuming is that McGuire tried to squirm his way out of taking full responsibility for that call by trying to not only justify it but by also saying that the officials got the recovery call wrong. Instead, he should have simply admitted the mistake and taken the criticism for it head-on.

It was a disappointing response from a head coach whose in-game decision-making will be heavily questioned after this loss. It was also a reply that will do nothing but further infuriate Texas Tech football fans who know that the coaching staff cost its players the chance to win this game.

Hearing McGuire admit his and Kittley's mistake would not have eliminated the pain of this defeat. However, it would have at least made fans feel a bit better by knowing that perhaps the Texas Tech coaching staff will learn from this egregious gaffe. Instead, we will have to live with weak justification and an attempt at pinning the loss on the officials. That's a bad look from a coach who is quickly losing favor with a large portion of his fan base.