We’re taking a stroll through some Texas Tech football history and as we look back on many of the highlights and great accomplishments that have happened out in Lubbock over the years, it’d be impossible not to look back on the absurd offensive numbers that have been put up over the years.
Back in 2000, with Kliff Kingsbury at the helm, the Red Raiders had a ton of fun scoring points left and right in Mike Leach’s first season out in Lubbock. With Leach’s Air Raid, Kingsbury and the Texas Tech football team found all sorts of absurd ways to move up and down the field. And that included a lot of passing. Kingsbury threw the ball a lot.
And he was the first Red Raider to ever throw for 3000 (or more) yards in a single season (shoutout to the Texas Tech football record book for having fun numbers to go through).
Texas Tech football history: Kliff Kingsbury was the first Red Raider to ever throw for at least 3000 yards in a single season
During the 2000 Texas tech football season, Kingsbury completed 393 passes (off of 634 attempts) and he managed to toss 25 touchdowns (against 19 interceptions, which is a lot). And with all of those completions and passes, Kingsbury threw for 3725 yards back in 2000.
That, my friends, is still a lot of yards to throw for in a single season. But at that time, there’s no way it wasn’t a little eye catching for folks. There’s no way folks didn’t have strong opinions about the fact that Kingsbury threw so many interceptions in a single season.
But, at the end of the day, he helped prove that the Air Raid would work and he did a fairly decent job in his first season operating that offense.
Of course, as we know now, that offense would revolutionize the way the rest of the Big 12 operated and football at every level found inspiration in what Mike Leach brought to Lubbock. And Kingsbury helped set the standard for impressive passing numbers out in West Texas.