With the way Joey McGuire and the Texas Tech football team have been hitting the Transfer Portal to bolster their roster throughout this offseason, it sure seems like the Red Raiders should be equipped to have plenty of success this coming season. And that could certainly be possible.
But right now, it seems like Texas Tech is still being looked at as a team that could fail to have a true breakthrough sort of season (even with all of the potential that the Red Raiders have heading into the year).
Taking a look at ESPN’s Football Power Index and those number crunching, stat calculating computers currently have the Red Raiders as the No. 7 team in the Big 12 when ranked by FPI. As for a projected win-loss record, Texas Tech has the 4th-best win-loss record projection in the Big 12 at 7.9-4.2.
And then there’s the folks gambling on things. Right now, the Fanduel Sportsbook has the line for Texas Tech’s win totals at 8.5.
So, how can Texas Tech surpass that?
Texas Tech should have a very real chance to surpass preseason expectations and get to at least nine wins in 2025
Let’s start with the basics.
McGuire and the Red Raiders should be able to roll right through their first three opponents, taking care of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Kent State, and Oregon State with relative ease. An FCS program, a struggling MAC team, and then a rebuilding Pac-12 team in a rebuilding conference. All of those games are in Lubbock. All of those games should be wins.
After that?
Let’s go ahead and assume that Texas Tech takes care of business in the rest of its home games, which is certainly feasible.
That includes Kansas on Oct. 11 (doable), Oklahoma State on Oct. 25 (VERY doable), BYU on Nov. 8 (doable, but this one could be kinda tricky depending on the QB situation), and then UCF on Nov. 15 (year one under Scott Frost 2.0 should be doable).
That gets the Red Raiders to seven wins. That means we just need two more, assuming I’m doing math right.
Texas Tech could get those two remaining wins from the following road games: at Utah on Sept. 20 (that could be a little tricky), at Houston on Oct. 4 (definitely doable given the rebuild project at UH), at Arizona State on Oct. 18 (I don’t love this one), at Kansas State on Nov. 1 (yeah, I don’t love this one either), and at West Virginia on Nov. 29 (I’m all on board with this one).
There are three games in there that I feel could go Texas Tech’s way without having to do too much mental convincing there. And if Tech takes two of those three? That feels like nine wins to me. And that surpasses both FPI expectations and those betting lines.