2011 Texas Tech Red Raiders Football Preview

Tommy Tuberville’s first season was a modest and qualified success in Lubbock. Using generous and curve-adjusted standards, the new head coach of the Texas Tech Raiders did an entirely respectable job of steadying the program he inherited. One must simply realize that as time goes forward, the body of work produced in 2010 won’t be viewed with the same levels of acceptance and understanding.

First things first, though: After the disastrous departure of longtime head coach Mike Leach, the Red Raiders simply wanted to get back to playing football, and they met that goal while attaining a few small prizes. The Red Raiders won a bowl game and scored a rousing upset win against Missouri at the precise moment that the Tigers were perceived to be on the upswing. An outright winning record, complete with a Ticket City Bowl triumph over Northwestern, made for a season Tubs’ troops could live with.

On the heels of that praise lies one sobering note, however: Texas Tech conceded 52 points to Iowa State in an embarrassing loss that revealed how far the program must still travel. Tech’s defense was the true weakness of the team last year, even though Tuberville was brought in for the express purpose of shoring up that side of the ball. This was not a reflection on Tuberville so much as it was an indictment of the lack of attention paid to defense during the Leach era. Now begins the new project of making Tech in the image of its current coach, not its former one.

Though they lost some key cogs due to graduation, the Red Raiders – after a year of adjustments under the Tuberville system – should expect to be better and make legitimate improvements on an absolute scale. The talent level at Texas Tech has increased, but more instructively, the personnel coming to Lubbock will more closely match Tuberville’s defense-first approach. The pass-happy profile of a Leach team is gradually giving way to a more balanced look and a defense that should possess more heft. The renewed emphasis on playing defense, something not familiar to those at Texas Tech for some time, will take some getting used to, but the locals know this is how the Red Raiders’ road to success must flow. The offense returns seven starters while the defense brings back eight. Quarterback Seth Doege had a tremendous spring camp as he looks to take the reins of the modified Air Raid offense in 2011. The entire offensive line returns, which is always a boon to a young quarterback. Texas Tech’s offensive line was the strength of the team in its 2008 breakout season; the offensive line must carry this team in the coming months.

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The Red Raiders’ schedule is pretty light out of conference, which should give them momentum heading into Big 12 action. A home date with Texas A&M on October 8 will be a great barometer of how much, if at all, the young Red Raiders have improved. A road trip to Oklahoma two weeks later will be difficult; Texas Tech has been dominated in Norman the past two outings, despite having a solid team on each occasion (especially in 2008, of course). A three game stretch – at Texas, home to Oklahoma State, at Missouri - is a gauntlet most teams couldn’t handle. However, there are appreciably large question marks surrounding each of those three teams. The Big 12 – scaled down in size from 12 teams to 10 this year – is going to be a wide-open fight for second place with Nebraska leaving the league and Oklahoma occupying the place of the unquestioned favorite. If Texas Tech’s coaching philosophy takes shape and the offensive line allows this team to control the ball more than Leach offenses typically did, the Red Raiders could create something special between the painted lines.