We’re continuing to work through the Texas Tech record book, examining the way the Red Raiders moved the ball, accomplished things, won games, and the whole nine yards. And generally speaking, we’ve seen a ton of great things since 2000.
On the offensive side of things, that is.
I mean, there are a lot of bad defenses. Some truly egregious things happened on that side of the ball for much of the past 20 years or so. We’ve seen the Red Raiders waste potential on multiple occasions simply because the defense was a huge problem.
But for the offense? Well, I mean, we’ve got a lot to be proud of over there. And so as we examine and measure offenses that we’ve seen in Lubbock, we can acknowledge that the 2009 Texas Tech offense was a bit clunky. It scored a lot of points, but also had a few turnover issues here and there.
Let’s take a look at Texas Tech’s last offense under Leach.
Texas Tech football history: Mike Leach’s last offense in Lubbock saw a ton of passing yards and a bunch of points
Look, Mike Leach really deserves a bunch of credit for developing a system that scored a bunch of points and moved the ball with ease. Well, most of the time. When there weren’t interceptions being thrown, the offense was great for Texas Tech in 2009!
Taylor Potts wasn’t Leach’s most effective quarterback ever, but the dude still deserves a fair amount of recognition for some of his performances in 2009. Specifically against the likes of the Oklahoma Sooners and the Michigan State Spartans. In the entirety of the year, Potts threw for 3440 yards, 22 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions.
Not the best touchdown to interception ratio ever, but still productive.
As a whole, the offense managed to average 470.8 total yards of offense per game, but it was in one of the most Mike Leach-influenced ways possible. The Red Raiders averaged 84 rushing yards per game. This team was very much so all in on throwing the ball around.
There weren’t any 1000 yard receivers or 1000 yard rushers in 2009, but Texas Tech did have a backup quarterback throw for 1219 yards and 14 touchdowns against four interceptions. Shoutout to Steven Sheffield for that.
It wasn’t Leach’s best offense, but it certainly wasn’t his worst either.