Leading Off
Pretty busy little day yesterday. Pretty busy little day.
Lady Raider Basketball
PREVIEW | Lady Raiders set to host Kansas on Wednesdayhttps://t.co/sBwLqZPsFq
— Lady Raider WBB (@LadyRaiderWBB) January 9, 2019
Texas Tech Baseball
Congrats to @josh6jung on being selected a First Team Preseason All-American by @PerfectGameUSA!
🔴#WreckEm⚫️ pic.twitter.com/7mg9zhMJZC
— Texas Tech Baseball (@TTU_Baseball) January 8, 2019
Texas Tech Football
Matt Wells made the hiring of Joe Lorig as the special teams coordinator. Lorig was at Memphis for the past copule of years and has connections with the staff from time at Arizona State and coached with Wells at Utah State, where he coached linebackers and safeties. Lorig was also outside linebackers coach for Memphis and if you click on through the story, Lorig is listed as the special teams coach and “defensive position TBA”.
Please join us in welcoming our new special teams coordinator, Joe Lorig!
🔴#WreckEm⚫ pic.twitter.com/woqcrRRsDw
— Texas Tech Football (@TexasTechFB) January 8, 2019
I sorta can’t believe it, Kliff Kingsbury gets fired from Texas Tech, is hired by USC as the offensive coordinator and then leaves after a month on the job to be the Arizona Cardinals head coach. Head freaking coach for the Arizona Cardinals. There was a ton of discussion about how this looks for Texas Tech and on one hand, Kingsbury had the third worst winning percentage in Texas Tech coaching history, but there’s probably a ton of coaches that haven’t been great in college but had success in the NFL. I still think that Kingsbury didn’t love the college aspect of recruiting and if I wanted to point to a couple of things that lead to him being terminated at Texas Tech: 1) I think he could have worked at recruiting more; 2) Better assistant coach hires (he had a budget so that was tough, but that’s part of making this work); and 3) Believing that a defensive coach that has a defense that is predicated on creating turnovers is a sustainable plan is not smart. Turnovers are, largely, luck in some respects and having a defense that is successful or not successful based off of turnovers isn’t sustainable (in my opinion).
Kingsbury was hired because he can develop quarterbacks, the question will be how Kingsbury fills out his staff and getting a defensive coordinator that actually knows what he’s doing. I have my doubts that this will work, again, not because of Kingsbury’s work ethic or anything like that, but it wasn’t easy learning how to be a head coach at Texas Tech, probably getting it closer to right than not right at the end of his tenure, but I wonder how big of a learning curve that will be for Kingsbury and the NFL. Maybe the Cardinals already have the plan to build around Kingsbury and the general manager will make the decision about the assistant coaches to an extent. I can’t imagine that Kingsbury’s circle of NFL contacts and NFL coaches is great. And make no mistake, coaching in the NFL and college are two completely different animals.
The Ringer’s Kevin Clark writes about how Patrick Mahomes makes his no-look passes:
Nothing Patrick Mahomes II does is by accident. He has become a nearly overnight superstar, epitomizing improvisational genius at the NFL level. When he throws a no-look pass, or across his body or with his non-dominant left hand, it appears to be a fleeting moment of ingenuity, a throw brainstormed on the spot. It is most certainly not: Mahomes has practiced impossible throws over and over again until they become normal. He has so thoroughly simulated high-risk passes that they no longer seem risky.
“You talk about no-look passes, and for him to be able to pull that off, I’m sure it was amazing for someone who hasn’t seen it, but he does stuff like that every single day,” says Chiefs quarterbacks coach Mike Kafka. “He’s been doing it since he got here.”
This is the story of how Mahomes’s incredible passes come to be. It combines his unique arm talent, prodigious practice habits, his warm-up routine, a lifelong devotion to training his arm, and a brain that can conjure up the types of passes that have enthralled the NFL this season.