All season, Texas Tech football fans have said that the 2026 Red Raiders have been underachieving by failing to dominate opponents. We all said that this team had yet to play its best football and that eventually, it would find its stride.
Deep down, though, most of us feared that the truth was that this team simply isn't as good as we expected it to be. Saturday, in a 37-24 loss at Cincinnati, everyone in Raiderland was forced to come to grips with that reality.
Facing an unranked Cincy team that had lost two games in a row, Tech was thoroughly dominated on both sides of the line of scrimmage. It was perhaps the most inexplicable loss of the Joey McGuire era.
The Bearcats came into the weekend reeling, especially on defense. In their last two games, they gave up an average of 39.5 points and 560 yards.
So it will forever remain puzzling how Texas Tech mustered only one garbage-time offensive touchdown and 400 yards of offense against a defense that entered the day ranked in the bottom ten nationally in yards allowed per game.
Even more maddening is the fact that the Red Raiders threw for only 227 yards against a Cincy defense that gave up an average of 294 yards per game through the air in the season's first six games. That certainly isn't going to quiet the critics who believe that offensive coordinator Mack Leftwich and QB Will Hammond are not the ones destined to lead this program to great heights.
The defense doesn't avoid criticism, though. A top-20 unit against the run before Saturday, one that was averaging just 94 yards allowed per game, let Cincy run for 255 yards despite the fact that the Bearcats were without their No. 1 running back.
What's more, the suspect Tech secondary let the JC French IV, a very average passer, throw for four touchdowns on the day. About the only thing the defense did well was turn in a pick-six in the third quarter on a controversial play that many around the nation feel should have been erased because of a targeting violation.
It was simply a disaster of a performance from the No. 8 team in the A.P. poll. Just when the Red Raiders had put together their first truly dominant effort of the season by beating Arizona State 53-25 last week, they turned around and, in one week's time, erased any benefit of the doubt they may have earned on the national scene.
Expect the Red Raiders to take a huge tumble in the polls tomorrow as the detractors will finally have a reason to show that they were right all along. But more importantly, this team now has no margin for error in the Big 12 regular season race.
Tech now likely has to win its final five games to assure a spot in the Big 12 Championship Game. Even then, if the league race becomes chaotic, a tiebreaker might prevent Joey McGuire's team from defending its conference title.
Of course, after what we saw on Saturday, a league championship and playoff birth seem laughable. That's because this team showed that it is nowhere near being good enough to compete at the top of the sport. Though it is tough to admit that out loud, it is something most Tech fans knew deep down for most of the season. Saturday's disaster of a showing simply forces us to come to grips with that reality.
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