During his time through his first three years in Lubbock, Joey McGuire has put together a pretty decent resume for a head coach at Texas Tech. Looking at the past couple decades, if you score a bunch of points and have a decent defense, you’ll likely find some success. And McGuire has managed to win 23 games through his first three years.
A rather significant reason for that is the way that Zach Kittley helped develop Texas Tech’s offense for McGuire. Previously the offensive coordinator for his alma mater out in Lubbock and a native of Abilene, Kittley was the perfect fit for that role.
And he managed to provide an offense that scored 37.6 points per game in 2024 and 34.2 points per game in 2022 (the Red Raiders weren’t that great on offense in 2023, so let’s ignore that for now).
Kittley ended up leaving Lubbock after three seasons with the Red Raiders and now he’s a head coach for Florida Atlantic, which apparently didn’t surprise McGuire and also didn’t really phase him. In fact, he was pretty complimentary of that.
Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire shares compliment for Florida Atlantic Owls head coach Zach Kittley
“I knew Zach was going to be a head coach,” McGuire noted during Big 12 media days. “He has those qualities and I’m excited for him.”
McGuire, who has been coaching in football for quite some time and has also managed to spend time working closely with a number of different coaches at different levels, understands the life of being a head coach. And he understands what the job requires.
So, it’s probably a good thing for Florida Atlantic fans that Kittley’s former boss is heaping that sort of praise on the first year head coach of the Owls.
As for Texas Tech fans worried about losing really good assistant coaches?
“I want to be around guys that want to move up, that want to be coordinators and want to be head coaches,” McGuire explained.
Well, it sure sounds McGuire isn’t shying away from hiring the best, even if that means they’ll be coaching somewhere else at some point and thus forcing him to go get a new assistant. And that also should encourage Texas Tech fans about Kittley’s replacement, Mack Leftwich.