Texas Tech Football Notebook: Depth Chart Released

Football Two-Deep Released. The annual tradition of Texas Tech releasing the two-deep, most likely the only updated two deep of the year, yesterday evening (as an aside, the wife and I cooked dinner for my mom, hence the delay in posting this). LAJ’s Don Williams has some thoughts on the depth chart, although I don’t know how many big things there are to discuss as this was how things were shaking out for most of the spring, but here goes:

There are no freshmen in any of the two deep except for Justin Murphy at right guard. That means that Tony Morales is at right guard, Baylen Brown is at right tackle and Paul Stawarz is at right tackle. The other interesting thing here is that you have the two Morales Bros. starting and the lack of freshmen means that all of them should be redshirted, which is good.
The quarterback still says “or” between Davis Webb and Patrick Mahomes and I’ll either be setting this place on fire on Saturday or not.
Dylan Cantrell gets the nod at Z-receiver and the only freshman in the two-deep at any receiver spot is California’s Tony Brown.
On defense, rather than Gary Moore backing up Branden Jackson, there’s Talor Nunez. I mentioned this over the spring, but the back-up here is a problem and it may be someone other than Nunez, but one of the other defensive linemen, like Alston or someone else.
Breiden Fehoko is not starting and it’s a bit of a surprise, Demetrius Alston, a guy we haven’t heard mentioned pretty much all spring, with Keland McElrath, backing him up, and Fehoko is the “or” with McElrath.
The back-up at the rush end is Zach Barnes and not Mike Mitchell. This will cause outrage, but I’m fine with seeing how this plays out over the course over the next week or two.
D’Vonta Hinton is the back-up at the weakside linebacker spot with the rest being usual characters. Hinton is a bit of a surprise, but maybe not. Can’t wait to see him play.
Nigel Bethel is not starting and is backing up Justis Nelson at one of the corner back spots, along with Thierry Nguema. At the other side, Tevin Madison and J.J. Gaines are at the other cornerback spot.
The safeties spot is exactly like has been reported, with Jah’Shawn Johnson and Payton Hendrix at one safety and Keenon Ward and Jalen Barnes at the other.
The kicker and punter positions are still up for grabs, the kicker being Michael Barden or Clayton Hatfield and the punter between Taylor Symmank or Clayton Hatfield.

Galloway on Baylor and Briles. Noted sports’ curmudgeon Randy Galloway with the FWST had a few words to say about the Baylor rape situation and Art Briles:

Art says he accepted the player as a transfer because he didn’t know the Boise violence story.

We are all guessing here, but I’d say that’s wrong. I’d say Art knew, and took the player anyway.

I can’t prove that. Art can’t prove he didn’t, and Petersen, now at the University of Washington, appears very shaky with his comments.

But we do know that the woman Ukwuachu knocked around in Boise two years ago came all the way to Waco to testify against him. Again, the former Baylor coed and this woman from Idaho are the heroes in this story. Nobody else is. Nobody.

But I’ve got too much respect for Briles as a head coach and a talent finder to think for a second he didn’t totally vet a player transferring in from another school.

Besides, Art knew for two years the player was being accused of rape on the Baylor campus, and it didn’t matter to him. Sam was still waiting in the wings, as of this summer, to join the Bears on the field.

Why would a sexual-assault claim in Boise, Idaho, with no police report filed, have mattered to Art when it came to the decision to offer Sam a scholarship? It didn’t even matter on Art’s own campus.

Miscellaneous. Wreck’Em 24/7’s Michael LaBarre is back with his weekly look at recruiting . . . SAEN’s Tim Griffin returns with his weekly ranking of all of the Texas teams . . the DMN staff does the same thing with the teams in Texas . . . LAJ’s Don Williams is looking back at defining moment and re-visits the first African American player at Texas Tech, Danny Hardaway . . . I’m not sure where to put this, but it needs to be somewhere. Via the LAJ, Lady Raider head basketball coach Candi Whitaker just received a commitment from a 5-star, yes 5-star, post player, Brittany Brewer from Abilene Wylie and if you want to check out a bit about Brewer, check out this video (beware auto-play) . . .