Morning Stakes: David Gibbs Continues to Impress; Jordan Davis as Graduate Assistant

Texas Tech defensive coordinator David Gibbs continues to impress and say the right things and the Avalanche Journal has an extensive interview. Plus, Jordan Davis will join the coaching staff as a graduate assistant this year and Totally Texas Tech has some new photos.

Gibbs Continues to Impress. Per the LAJ’s Don Williams, he has an extensive Q&A with Texas Tech defensive coordinator David Gibbs (Gibbs must have done a bit of media availability during this past week) where he talks about all sorts of things. I continue to be impressed by Gibbs as he talks about what he hopes he will do with the defenses. Gibbs was asked about about returning to a power-five conference and Gibbs gets to his general philosophy as to how he knows he can’t stop opposing offenses unless you’re Alabama, but as a defense, you have to adjust and change up your looks and have that be teachable to 18 year olds.

The fascinating thing to me was that we get a bit of insight about what he maybe wants to do and how he wants to play:

“This is a great challenge. Whether or not you’ve got good enough players, whether or not you’re as smart a defensive guy as they are an offensive guy, you better find a way to survive. You’ve got to change up your looks. You’ve got to change up your fronts. And it’s easy to say, but when you talk about doing it, going from a 3-4 to a 4-3, that all sounds good sitting in here, but you’ve got to teach these 18-year-olds to understand it and to do it.

“So we’ve kind of built a way where we can play the same coverages into different fronts. So even though the front alignment might change, the majority of these guys back here (in the secondary), play the same thing, the same technique. It’s same as, same as, even though the call (is different).

Gibbs is also asked about how he likes to play, knowing that he can’t bump-and-run every play, and that Gibbs will run a lot of zone coverage initially

“We play a ton of zone on first and second down, to where you can see the ball, see the quarterback, which is why we’ll get more interceptions than in the past. There’ll be a lot more short passes. You’ll be in here asking me one week why we let them throw for 400 yards and all 400 yards were 10-yard passes. But that’s OK. At least the clock’s running and it’s not four 60-yard passes. That’s kind of mindset, my belief.”

I was also curious as to how this answer really works, especially the second part, as to visually as to how that works. I’m guessing that Gibbs is talking practically, about a defender being 10 yards behind the offensive player and I think Gibbs is talking about not making a “proper tackle” but making a football play and trying to create a turnover.

A-J: Do you have any clever ball-strip drills they haven’t already tried? Tech’s been talking about getting more takeaways for two years.

Gibbs: “No. No. They’ve done them all. The difference now is, when you come to practice, you’re going to see us take the ball away, because that’s all we’re going to do. That’s all we’re going to focus on.

“The whole ‘Practice tackling’ and ‘getting in a good position’ and doing all this … . Let me tell you something: If you’ve got 10 yards and I’ve got to go tackle you, I’m not going to make that tackle anyway, so I’m not going to sit out here and scream at some DB to come to balance and get in a good position on a guy when he can’t make that tackle anyway. But he can go try to take the ball away from a guy.”

Davis as Graduate Assistant. Via Chris Level, we get good some good news as former Texas Tech footballer (as recent as last year), Jordan Davis, will stay around Lubbock and be a graduate assistant with the program. As you may remember, Davis was concussed in the early part of the 2014 season, I think the Kansas State game, and he never played another down the rest of the year.


Campus Photos in the Ice. Friend of the blog, Totally Texas Tech, has some terrific campus photos of the ice and “ice spikes” or the Hoar Frost that creates the ice spikes. Pretty cool photos.

Miscellaneous. The Red Raider Sports staff got together to discuss what a successful spring would be . . . the Orlando Sentinel writes about the Big 12 quarterback battles . . .

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