The 2026 Texas Tech football season has proven that success in college athletics is rarely linear. Rather, it ebbs and flows like the tide, which rises and falls but never remains steady.
Sure, the Red Raiders are 6-1 this season, the same record they had after seven games in 2025. However, everyone can see that this year's team is nowhere near as dominant or talented as last season's.
Much of the blame has fallen upon the struggling offense, which certainly deserves criticism, especially after Saturday's debacle in Cincinnati. However, the defense isn't without fault this year. And the reason that Texas Tech has regressed on that side of the ball is that the program didn't hit a bunch of home runs in the transfer portal as it did a year ago.
Last season, Tech had five critical transfers pan out to make the defense arguably the best in America. Pass rushers David Bailey and Romello Height, corner Bryce Pollock, and defensive tackles Lee Hunter and A.J. Holmes all joined the Red Raiders before the 2025 season, and each exceeded expectations last year.
Of that group, Holmes was the only one that didn't earn first-team All-Big 12 recognition (he was named to the third-team, partly because he didn't become a starter until the middle of the season). That's a tremendous return on investment and the main reason why Tech was able to ride its defense to a conference title.
This year, the Red Raiders turned to the portal again in the hopes of replacing Bailey, Height, Hunter, and All-American middle linebacker Jacob Rodriguez. However, the players they brought in aren't trending toward being first-team all-conference honorees. In fact, most have been merely average at best.
Texas Tech has gotten only passable play from its top 2026 portal additions
It was always gong to be difficult to replace Bailey, Height, Hunter, and Rodriguez. After all, each of those players heard their names called in the first half of the 2026 NFL Draft.
However, the plan was to find replacements who could be about 80-90% of what their predecessors were. That didn't happen, though.
To start at the two edge rush positions, Tech brought in Adam Trick and Trey White. While no one expected them to be as productive as Bailey and Height were in 2025, the belief was that they would be good enough to keep Tech's pass rush among the elite in the conference.
However, through seven games, Trick and White have combined for just four sacks. At this point last season, Bailey had 10.5 by himself while Height had 5.0. What's more, Trick and White have just 6.0 tackles for loss between them through seven games, 11.5 fewer than Bailey and Height had at this point a year ago (17.5).
One warning flag about Trick and White should have been that both played at the Group of 6 level (Miami of Ohio and San Diego St., respectively). That's a far cry from the level that Bailey and Height played at before coming to Tech. Bailey was a Stanford transfer, meaning he played in the Big Ten, and Height had spent time at Georgia Tech, USC, and Auburn, meaning he was developed in the ACC, S.E.C., and Big Ten.
Along the interior of the defensive line, Tech expected Mateen Ibirogba to be a disruptive force. Though his game is different than Hunter's (Ibirogba was expected to be more capable of knifing through the line to make plays in the backfield rather than being an immovable tree stump), the hope was that he'd have the same type of impact on the defense that Hunter did.
So far, Ibirogba has been largely anonymous. Yes, he starts for the Red Raiders. However, his play has been indistinguishable from that of the players who rotate in for him.
The Wake Forest transfer has been credited with only 13 tackles and 2.0 sacks. Through seven games in 2025, Hunter had 19 tackles and 1.5 sacks.
Last season, Hunter finished with 42 tackles. Ibirogba is on pace to wind up with just 24 in a 13-game season.
The most difficult task for any Texas Tech newcomer in 2026 fell on Austin Romaine's shoulders. He was the one asked to try to fill Jacob Rodriguez's shoes. Unfortunately, he's fallen well short of that.
Of the four big-ticket transfers Tech brought in, Romaine has been the best. He's made 52 tackles (3.5 for loss), and had a pair of pick-sixes. In addition, he's been credited with three pass defenses.
However, he has been more of a liability than Tech had hoped. Frequently, he has gotten lost in coverage, allowing his man to be wide open as was the case at the end of the Houston game when he gave up a critical touchdown that brought the Cougars to within two points in the closing minute.
Also, he isn't creating turnovers at a high rate. Outside of the two pick-sixes he had against Sam Houston, he hasn't been a factor in any Red Raider takeaway. Of course, generating takeaways was the specialty of his predecessor.
A season ago, the Red Raider defense finished No. 3 nationally in total defense, No. 1 in rushing defense, and No. 26 in pass defense. This year, Tech sits at No. 86, No. 24, and No. 126 respectively in those categories.
While many factors have contributed to that dramatic falloff, the lack of success from the most coveted portal additions has to be at the top of the list. Everyone knew that the 2025 defense would be difficult to replicate; however, the expectation was that Tech would still field one of the better units in the nation. That has not been the case because this year, the program hit a bunch of singles in the portal instead of knocking it out of the park for the second year in a row.
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