After year away, Isaac Smith is ready to return with a vengeance for Texas Tech

This season, the Texas Tech football team will be looking to a new group of defensive linemen to play critical roles after seeing all of 2023's starters depart over the offseason. One Red Raider who could emerge as a star is Isaac Smith, a junior who missed all of last fall with a knee injury.

If Red Raider fans aren't familiar with the Oklahoma native, it is understandable. After all, he's appeared in only eleven games as a Red Raider with just two being starts. What's more, all of his action came two seasons ago.

In 2022, Smith was forced into a larger role than expected late in the season when now Las Vegas Raiders defensive end, Tyree Wilson, (who would be a 2023 top-10 pick) broke his foot. That injury made Smith have to replace his team's best pass rusher as just a redshirt freshman.

Fortunately, he was up to the task. In the final three games of 2022, with Wilson sidelined, the Red Raiders got 11 total tackles and three tackles for loss from Smith.

Last year, it was expected that Smith would be a major factor in the Red Raiders' pass rush but it wasn't to be due to his preseason injury. However, last week, Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire said that Smith is back to full health and ready to dominate.

"I think sometimes we forget about Isaac Smith," McGuire said, "and how he just came on like a freight train and played so well against OU and played so well against Ole Miss [in 2022]. Whenever he got hurt last year, I thought our depth could handle that kind of injury but what we missed was his toughness.

"He has had a great summer...He's fully back. It's going to be interesting because he can play [field or boundary end]. We'll start him more at our boundary end. That's where he ended. He's about 255-258 pounds right now and he's ready to go...I'm glad he's back."

This year, the Red Raiders have to replace the 14 sacks that last season's starting defensive line provided. How many sacks can Smith, who has only one in his career thus far, give the Red Raiders? That will be one of the keys to the season.

He has shown flashes of being a disruptive force at the Big 12 level and he's played his best against the toughest competition he's seen. Now, if he can prove that he's ready for a starring role on the 2024 defense, he could be a key to helping the Red Raiders compete for a Big 12 title. So don't be shocked if he proves to be one of the program's breakout performers this fall.