Texas Tech beat TCU, 17-14.
TEXAS TECH IS GOOD AT DEFENSE?? (Well, sometimes, at least)
And maybe that’s enough.
Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
The only surprising part of that sentence is the lack of a third digit on each of those scores. This is a series in which one team recently gave up so many points in a single game that the stadium ran out of fireworks. The most Big 12 pew pew pew team of them all just won a road conference game despite being unable to rely on their injury-hampered offense.
Is ... Texas Tech ... good at ... defense ... all of a sudden?
Well, hang on.
The story of modern TTU can be told in lots of ways, but how about a spin through the headlines of Bill Connelly’s annual previews?
And so on and so forth. Texas Tech hasn’t ranked in the top 50 in Defensive S&P+ since 2009, ranking in the 110s or worse (!!) from 2014 through 2016.
A jump to No. 88 in 2017 was considered program-changing improvement, even though repeating that same jump in 2018 would’ve only meant a move to roughly average, not really good.
Here’s where we remember Tech doesn’t need really good defense.
Tech just needs an opportunistic defense that scrapes for the ball (TTU currently ranks No. 32 in takeaways), gets off the field quickly, gets a handful of stops per game, and gives its lethal offense possessions. That’s DC David Gibbs’ entire philosophy and the reason he was such an enticing fit for the air raid all along.
If the raw stats don’t ever like the game states TTU finds itself in, so what? And if Oklahoma can win 10 games while giving up lots of points, then why can’t TTU? It’s literally happened before.
So is this defense good yet or not? (This is not a rhetorical question.)
In 2018, the Red Raiders gave up only 14 points at TCU, only 17 at Oklahoma State, 0 against Lamar (one of the worst teams in Division I, but still, you can’t give up fewer than 0), and probably like 1.4 points against Kansas next week.
Great!
In 2018, the Red Raiders gave up 47 points to Ole Miss in an opener that seemed to kill the entire narrative about Tech’s improved D, 49 points to Houston at home, 42 points to West Virginia at home, and however many they give up to Oklahoma soon.
Not great!
Entering Thursday night against TCU, the Texas Tech defense ranked No. 101 in Defensive S&P+, or basically where it has for the last half-decade. (The offense had its customary top-10 ranking.) That’ll obviously tick up, now that Tech looked better against TCU than Ohio State did (never forget Texas Tech’s defense looked better against TCU than Ohio State’s did), but we cannot consider this a good defense on the year as a whole.
Good enough, though?
So far! TTU is officially in the thick of the Big 12 race, now that it’s finally capable of winning more than one type of game.
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