When Joey McGuire and the Texas Tech Red Raiders take on the BYU Cougars in the Big 12 championship game, they’ll have a starting quarterback who seems to be feeling better than he was the last time the Red Raiders faced off against the BYU Cougars.
If you ask Texas Tech’s head coach for some reasons for Texas Tech football fans to be optimistic about this game, McGuire will apparently quickly point to the way that Behren Morton seems to be operating at a higher level than he was when he returned from injury in the midst of the season.
And McGuire sure seems to believe that Morton continuing to improve in terms of health will help the Red Raiders have more success on offense. Which, you know, seems to make sense to me. Healthy quarterback, better chance of points being scored.
Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire sure seems thrilled to have his starting quarterback back on the field full time for the Red Raiders
“I think our quarterback’s feeling as good as he’s felt all year long,” McGuire explained at a press conference earlier in the week. “Whenever Behren plays well, we play at a really high level.”
Given all of the injuries that Texas Tech and Morton have had to navigate (not just this year, but also all throughout his career in Lubbock), I’m sure McGuire is hopeful that his quarterback will be fully healthy (or as close as he can be at this time of the season) moving forward.
“He brings so much energy,” Texas Tech’s head coach continued.
And as for other areas where the Red Raiders might see a bit of improvement as the Texas Tech football team has continued to gel together?
“I think that we can execute at a different level,” McGuire said. “We’re getting close, but we can still execute [higher]. We only had two pre-snap penalties this last week, but staying away from the pre-snap penalties keeps us ahead of the chains.”
Limit mistakes from your team? Have a healthy starting quarterback who is poised to have plenty of success and connect with his receivers on a very regular basis? Neither of those seem like too much to ask for and both of those could have a very serious impact on this game (and all of the possible and potential remaining games on Texas Tech’s schedule that haven’t yet been scheduled).