10 Things: Texas Tech 56, Oklahoma State 48

1. Game Links:

2. 7 Wins. That’s no joke for this program. I know, expectations should be higher, but pretty great for this program to get to 7 wins, in a very Texas Tech sort of way, and to have a winning record on the road in the Big 12 and to have one game left to get to 8 wins. Play great at home, and that’s within your grasp. I’m excited about that. Maybe I shouldn’t be, I don’t know, but I am excited for this situation.

Let’s make it a special one next Saturday, Red Raiders.

🎟️ https://t.co/EAyMHaNlAg pic.twitter.com/D9IbRseDul

— Texas Tech Football (@TexasTechFB) November 24, 2024

3. Losing DT’s Set the Tone Defensively (Maybe). I don’t know how much this had to do with anything, but losing Quincy Ledet and De’Braylon Carroll in the first quarter, your starters on the defensive line, probably had a pretty significant effect on the outcome of this game and probably changed the outcome more than is apparent. This worries me for next week because Oklahoma State’s totals also include 74 yards lost, mainly due to that bad snap and Oklahoma State absolutely ran all over this defense.

4. Tahj & Rodriguez Are So Good. It looked like Tahj Brooks was going to have a day where he struggled to do much of anything, but he found his footing in the second half. Just 42 rushing yards in the first half and 2.5 yards a carry (overall) but 97 in the second half with 4.4 yards a carry. And if we’re being technical here, 69 of those rushing yards were in the 4th quarter alone, that’s 5.8 yards a carry, plus Morton went 6 of 7 for 65 yards. Brooks final line was 28 attempts to 133 rushing yards, 3 touchdowns, plus 9 catches for 65 yards and a touchdown. That’s 198 all-purpose yards and 4 touchdowns. Huge.

Jacob Rodriguez finished the game with 13 tackles, 1 interception and 1 fumble recovery. The fumble recovery was on the bad snap (and I wish I could see who the player was that was sprinting down there to grab the ball initially to allow Rodriguez to recover the ball) and that really changed the game.

5. Tight End Magic. We finally saw the tight ends utilized like I sort of envisioned this year, Jalin Conyers had 7 catches for 74 yards and a touchdown, with a beautiful touchdown grab from Morton. Mason Tharp also looked great, had a touchdown grab and Johncarlos Miller had 2 catches for 21 yards. That’s a lot of production from a really talented room.

6. Pass Defense Needs A Lot of Help. A true freshman quarterback who had 10 attempts last week ended up with 353 passing yards, completing 73% of his attempts with 2 touchdowns. There were so many bad angles, bad tackles, and general bad play from the secondary. I don’t know about naming names, but the entire secondary should be thinking that there are problems here.

7. Stats and Stuff.

Texas Tech was 14 of 22 on 3rd down. That’s insane. That’s a conversion rate of 64%. Texas Tech was 4 of 5 on 3rd and long and 6 of 7 on 3rd and short. Morton and Kittley were 12 of 13 for 115 on 3rd down.
Texas Tech was only in passing downs (2nd and 8 to go) 35% of the time, which means that they had all of the options in front of them and weren’t facing long downs and distances.
Alternatively, Oklahoma State only had passing downs 25% of the time. That’s not good.
Oklahoma State was 2 of 9 on 3rd down, but that also means that Oklahoma State was absolutely destroying the defense on 1st and 2nd downs.
In fact, Oklahoma State had 37 1st downs for 305 yards, that’s an average of 8.2 yards per play. Texas Tech had 40 for 238 yards, for 6 yards a game.

8. Idle Thoughts.

Should Ollie Gordon have gotten ejected for punching a player? Yes.
The 2 4th down conversions where Brooks ran outside were pretty great and made Oklahoma State pay for their focus inside.
Caleb Douglas had 5 catches for 105 yards and a touchdown and he’s physically a very gifted individual and he’s the receiver that we wanted last year’s receivers to be.
If you had to pick someone else on defense that played really well, I’m not sure who that would be. That’s a problem and I know there’s youth here and lots of holes among the starters, but there should be more than just 1 standout and you also realize how important Rodriguez is to this team. He changes the game.
I don’t know what Perry and McGuire were discussing, but I thought overall, the special teams played a really big game. The Kelby Valsin onside kickoff recovery. The Drae McCray 45-yard kickoff return made one of those Brooks’ touchdowns much easier.
Coy Eakin showed up, 7 for 90 yards.
I said on Friday in the preview that McGuire asked Kittley to slow down in certain times and he did and that was a problem. Notice the last quote and McGuire told Kittley to put the pedal to the metal and that’s the offense you get. 49 points and 543 yards of offense. Again, I know that some of you don’t like Kittley, but I think a lot of what you see is what McGuire wants you to see.
What we should be talking about is the defense, but maybe that’s a discussion after the end of the year.

9. Coach Comments.

Opening statement.

“It reminded me of some old timey Texas Tech shootout football. Man, we came out on top. I’m so proud of the guys. We came out fast, had an opportunity to really stretch the lead, just dropped a pass. Then, just back and forth, we were on our heels at times on defense. Offense really made some big plays, STs made some big plays. Then got some turnovers when we needed to. Good they had that high snap, we had pressure coming and so we got back there and got that touchdown. I went in there and said ‘he Kelby Valsin, great job.’ They kicked it to him and he did a good job to catch it and not fair catch it to go score. We had everything tonight, it was crazy. Got the win, went 1-0 in Stillwater and have a winning record on the road for the year, now an opportunity next week at home to thank our fans and thank our seniors.”

On Tahj Brooks.

“He should be a finalist for the Doak Walker. He should be in the final three, he is as good of a back there is in the country. He does it all, pass pro, you saw the catch, Behren dropped it out of the air right on him and I thought he made such a great catch. That was big because they had all the momentum and would’ve going into the half but we got the lead 21-14. At the end, we put him in wildcat and he takes it to the home.”

What happened with 1:53, any explanation?

“They discussed it and said that’s why (Tahj’s helmet coming off). I have no idea. I’ve never seen that in my life.”

On the offense.

“I told Kittley when we were on our heels defensively that we’ve got to hammer down. Tempo, whatever we’ve got to do. Whatever is in the playbook, you’ve just got to attack em because we weren’t stopping them. It was going to be a back and forth game and luckily we came out on top. We made some plays that put us in good positions. How about Tre’Von McAlpine blocking the extra point, that changed the game right there. Those are little plays that go unnoticed in games that change everything you’re going to do and playcalling.”

On playing in Stillwater.

“That’s the Big 12 man. I haven’t looked at the scores yet, but there was teams that got beat tonight that didn’t think they were going to get beat. It shakes the Big 12 up, honestly, you don’t know what you’re going to get week in and week out. That team, he’s as good of a coach as there is in the country, what he’s done at Oklahoma State is absolutely amazing. They have a lot of seniors on that team with a lot of pride, so we knew we were going to get their best game, luckily we outlasted em.”

10. Tortilla Tossin’ Players of the Game.

Behren Morton gets the first tortilla for me, 37 of 53 for 404 yards, 4 touchdowns, and 1 interception. That’s a 70% completion rate and that’s sort of the Morton that we’d like to see.

Jacob Rodriguez was just dominant on the defensive side, including a body slam. Already mentioned the 13 tackles, but his play is ridiculously impactful.

Tahj Brooks and his 198 total yards and 4 touchdowns. Just impacts the game in so many ways.