This one wasn’t fun. Give me a little anxiety, which I guess could be a good thing considering most of us were chalking this up to an automatic loss in the preseason and Tech was right in it until the end.

221

Texas Tech surrendered 221 rushing yards. The old rush defense reared its head last night. Poor tackling, poor angles, everything. And this was to a team that was piecing its offensive line together with backups on backups on backups. The running backs were only averaging something like 3 yards per carry, until last night.

11 – 50 – 2

Mason Rudolph, who isn’t a running quarterback, was able to run for 50 yards and two touchdowns. The Tech defense did not even try to stop him. On option looks, the defensive ends always crashed on the running back and left Rudolph alone. Rudolph saw this and took advantage. Those two touchdowns were ridiculously easy for him as he strolled in untouched, including the final touchdown that put them ahead for good.

9 – 127 – 1

Superstar receiver James Washington hauled in 9 catches for 127 yards. Considering this guy has eaten the Tech defense’s lunch every year he’s played against it, this was actually a pretty respectable performance of the defense. While Washington got some yards and he scored once, he never really broke the top off the defense and scored on a deep pass.

-14

Tech was down 14 points to a better-than-their-ranking Oklahoma State. We have seen many a Tech team’s pack it in once they fall behind, but this team last night fought back and eventually tied the game.

2.1

The Tech rushing attack was only able to rush for 2.1 yards per carry. This is absolutely unacceptable and will need to be addressed going forward. The offensive line needs to figure things out to help open this offense up going forward. Without a rushing attack, too much pressure will be on Shimonek and he can’t carry this team like Mahomes did.