Last Week’s Game

Seth: Well, how much more sad can this get? Texas Tech gets blown out in Manhattan, the offense is stagnant, but the defense plays well enough to win on most nights. On Sunday evening, we find out that Jett Duffey is in a boot and crutches and there’s a better than zero chance that Texas Tech starts a walk-on at quarterback against Baylor. Not only that, but now Kingsbury is coaching to get Texas Tech bowl eligible against Baylor. Before and after the game I wrote that if Kingsbury didn’t beat K-State, where the Red Raiders were a touchdown favorite, then that was likely the end of Kingsbury. Any general meandering thoughts are appreciated.

Travis: It’s like the saddest country song you can imagine. We have no quarterbacks, will probably soon have no coach and what was once a promising season has just vanished.

I didn’t get to watch the game because we were driving home from a basketball tournament up by where you stay, but I was able to get a good visualization of the miserable conditions and effort from guys on the radio. It all just sounded like a comedy of errors. A very sad comedy of errors.

So I have no idea where we go from here. I’ve been a Kingsbury backer from the beginning and I still think this season plays out very differently if Bowman stays healthy, but I’m not gonna argue with those that want him gone. I really hate the idea of starting over again with a new staff but I’m sure that’s where we’re heading.

Suburban Gangsters

Travis: All I really have to look forward to this week is that turkey that’s sitting in my fridge right now. I’m gonna brine the hell outta that sucker and cook him up real good. That’s my best thing- brining. Brining is good. Everything else is bad.

Seth: I’ve never had to cook the turkey. It’s always been my mom or my mother-in-law or someone else, but all these years, my wife and I have never had to cook a turkey. And for Christmas, we’re always given a smoked turkey that I essentially freeze and eat for the next month after Christmas. But I’ve heard that brining is the only way to go and I’ve got some friends that brine chickens and then smoke them and they’re absolutely divine.

The Best Thing Ever

Seth: (Ed. Note – I accidentally skipped the Best Thing Ever topic this week, so Travis hasn’t seen this, but I’ll throw this out there anyways.) My wife has a really bad back, she’s had surgery, she’s not even 40, just bad luck or something. In any event, she can’t run, but she likes to run and so we bought a fancy treadmill that she can run on because it’s easier on her overall. It’s fancy in that it has this screen and program called iFit and you can follow these trainers who run with you or you can just run like a normal treadmill. Well, this has turned out to be a real benefit for me because I started a 2 month running series a few months ago and I had never trained for distance in my entire life. As a youth (this makes me sound really old, but I’m doing intentionally) I was a sprinter so I did sprint workouts. In any event, the training has been good and follow the 80/20 rule, which is that 80% of your runs should be at a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10, an easy run, and 20% of your runs should be an 8 or 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 and these workouts should kick your ass and you think you’re about to vomit. This has been fun for me as a 44 year old guy who had not really pushed himself and thus far I have not thrown up, which would be an absolute disaster on a treadmill. One of the other cool things about this deal is that you can basically map some coordinates and run places where Google Maps has gone. It’s not a smooth video to running experience, it’s a lot of still pictures that you move with as you run along a road. Thus far, the best run has been running the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. Google mapped that while the sun was setting along the ocean, glistening off the ocean and the green setting in Ireland was pretty great. I’ve run on random roads in Maine, California, the Netherlands, France, etc. It’s been much better for me to look at rather than just a graphic that tells you how many laps you’ve run.

Random Top Five

Seth: There was a Slack discussion that I was not part of (because I was asleep) about the best Looney Tunes characters and I can think of no better way to end the season than to rank your top 5 Looney Tunes characters.

1. Bugs Bunny
2. Daffy Duck
3. Wile E. Coyote
4. Yosemite Sam
5. Sam Sheepdog

Travis: gotta go with:
1. Yosemite Sam
2. Foghorn Leghorn
3. Daffy
4. Bugs
5. Wylie Coyote

This Week’s Game

Travis: So what now? Do we have a chance against Baylor? Remember a few years ago when Baylor ran the wildcat the entire game against UT or somebody like that and won the game? Is that what we have to do?

Win or lose, I’m proud of this team and I’m glad Kliff Kingsbury is a Red Raider.

Seth: I don’t have a clue what happens. I mean, if it is Colt Garrett, then Kingsbury is going to do what he always does, which is sling it around and hope for the best. He’s never changed that aspect of who he is and what he does. He’ll probably control a lot of what’s happening from the line of scrimmage and do a ton of stuff pre-snap to get a better play and take advantage of the defense. If there’s someway that Bowman is able to play, then I’d guess he puts 6 guys to protect on each and every play and try to coach Bowman to just go down if the pocket collapses. I don’t know that I can allow him to have three collapsed lungs in one season. That might be a record.

Game Predictions

Travis: I don’t know, I’m at a loss over it all. Maybe we can squeeze our five field goals and play stout enough on defense to hold them to two touchdowns. Boom, perfect formula.

Seth: I love Kingsbury, he’s one of us. I don’t know why the football gods are conspiring against Texas Tech, we’ve been through a lot. Maybe Texas Tech gets a safety and a couple of defensive scores and win one for Kingsbury. I think those sorts of motivating factors do play a big part in how teams play.