Texas Tech Football Notebook: Big 12 Coaches Dish on Texas Tech; Kyron Cumby Walks On

Each year Athlon Sports talks to Big 12 coaches who speak anonymously about the other teams in the Big 12 and it is probably my favorite thing that I read each year despite my belief that some of this may be completely made up. Regardless, I guy in and read this pretty carefully and go through it each year.

This first part, is at the very least, encouraging, and think that at the very least maybe things are headed in the right direction.

“They’re talented, they play hard, and they’re more talented on defense under Matt [Wells], but they’re still lacking a cohesive identity on that side of the ball.

This part is what we know about the team, which is that the defense has always been lacking, and that Wells has felt the pressure that the offense has to be better in order to keep pace:

“I know that they were inconsistent on offense and made the change there, but it’s the defense that’s holding them back. So you could say in broad strokes that it’s the same situation they had with [Kliff] Kingsbury. I think you can see the stress it put on their offensive play-calling, that they know they’ve got to keep scoring to stay alive no matter what the situation is.”

Yes, I think Shough, despite not seeing him play a down for Texas Tech, is the likely starting quarterback as the season starts.

“The safe bet is that they’re going to start the Oregon transfer (Tyler Shough). He’s the best chance they have to win right away, and they’re probably on the hot seat now.”

I’m coupling this next quote with a quote from the TCU section, which relates to offensive coordinator Sonny Cumbie:

Texas Tech: “We’re curious how much of that offense will be Sonny [Cumbie] and how much will be Matt. They’re going to keep the backs involved, it won’t be the old Tech [Mike] Leach air raid, I really doubt that.”

TCU: “Sonny’s [Cumbie] gone, so are they going to run out of the spread more? Doug [Meacham] called most of the plays anyway, so I don’t think you should expect a massive change.”

There’s been a lot of speculation about who called plays last year (at least from me) and I think we know it won’t the the typical Air Raid, the running backs are too talented and the tight ends are going to be a big part of the offense. If the TCU offense was largely the result of Meachum, that makes me feel that much better about the Cumbie hire.

The opposing coaches definitely know that Texas Tech hit the transfer portal pretty hard and yes, the coaches know that they need to win right now, which I’m very excited about the secondary transfers, Muddy Waters, Reggie Pearson, Rayshad Williams, and Malik Dunlap. That would seemingly be a pretty immediate upgrade I think.

“This is a huge, huge offseason for them. They went into the portal pretty hard to try to fix things and there’s pressure to win now. That usually means as a coach, when you haven’t won somewhere and don’t have that to point to, you can end up getting outside of your system, outside of your culture. It’s really tricky.”

I think we all know that it comes down to this. The defense. The defensive line, the ability of the defensive line to actually hold the offensive line and allow the linebackers to make plays. It’s time for Tyree Wilson and Philip Blidi and anyone else to wants to get after the quarterback to do so. They are the key to what happens in 2021.

“I really feel like if they show defensive improvement, meaning if they’re able to start holding some conference teams in the 20s, that’s enough to keep Matt, because they’ve never had a consistent defense at that place.”

A consistently good, not great, defense, is what Texas Tech needs.

Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams was the first to have this that I know of (please correct me if I am wrong, which is often, although it would not surprise me if this was on one of the pay sites that I don’t have access to read) that Illinois running back Kyron Cumby (5’8″ and 180) has walked on to Texas Tech.

Cumby is a water-bug receiver and running back (although Don says he’ll just play running back) who played at Plano in high school, was offered by Illinois, Colorado, BYU, Iowa State, Kansas, Washington State, and Texas Tech as far as Power 5 offers are concerned. If 2018 was his senior year, which I think it maybe was, then he ran for 897 yards (ran for 1,390 his junior season), with 17 touchdowns, and 523 yards receiving with 5 touchdowns. That’s some pretty solid production.

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