The 2003 Texas Tech football season is an interesting one. We’re talking about a year in which the Red Raiders had one of the best offenses in college football (and produced one of the best offenses that TTU has seen since 2000) and Mike Leach’s Red Raiders still only won eight games that year.
We’ll get into the whole reason for “why on earth didn’t Texas Tech win more than eight games while having the No. 4 scoring offense in the country” on another occasion. For right now, we’re going to talk a bit about how that offense scored a ton of points over and over again.
Because we’re wandering through Texas Tech’s record book and learning more and more about some of the best offenses this program has seen since 2000.
Texas Tech football history: Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense routinely torched opposing defenses in 2003
And this group definitely qualifies for that.
B.J. Symons was remarkable all throughout the 2003 Texas Tech season, by the way. Tech has seen plenty of quarterbacks throw for over 3000 yards in a season, but Symons came pretty dang close to throwing for 6000 yards in 2003.
As he completed over 65 percent of the 719 pass attempts, Symons managed to throw for 5833 yards, 52 touchdowns, and 22 interceptions. Symons was averaging 448.7 passing yards per game (which is more yards of offense than many teams were averaging per game in 2003).
The Red Raiders didn’t have a 1000 yard rusher in 2003, but Texas Tech did have Carlos Francis with 75 receptions for 1177 receiving yards and nine touchdowns. Along with that, the Red Raiders also had Wes Welker rack up 1099 receiving yards and nine touchdown receptions on 97 receptions.
Oh! And Nehemiah Glover caught 77 passes for 1081 yards and nine touchdowns of his own. That makes THREE players with at least 1000 yards receiving during the 2003 season.
Mickey Peters over at tight end also made a significant impact on the passing game. He came really close to getting 1000 receiving yards in a single season as he had 975 yards and a dozen touchdowns on 78 receptions.