Up next are the defensive backs and we’ll start with the cornerbacks. To clarify, Stevenson, White, Lindsay, McDonald, and Henderson haven’t been assigned positions that I know of, or they weren’t discussed during spring practices. That’s fine, they are young players and the hope is that they see a redshirt season.

The Texas Tech pass defense was 120th in yards per attempt allowed at 8.4 yards last year. That’s in-between Arkansas State and New Mexico for context. Not exactly great. In terms of passing yards per game, they were one of only two teams that allowed over 300 yards a game, 308.1 to be exact, with Tulsa being at 316.0. Texas Tech has the distinction of being the only team that allowed 4,000+ yards passing last year, 4,005. Yes, this group needed significant improvement.

With all of the negative out of the way, it would seem that the cornerback position is pretty loaded with additional help from Balfour, Boyd, Grant and Pollack, who are all trying to help a pass defense that was pretty terrible (recent YouTube shorts on each of them were recently released and I’ve embedded at the end of the post). Horn and Hampton I think are really pretty darned good and think the staff likes them quite a bit. As of right now, if you made me predict the starting two cornerbacks, I’d go with Horn and Boyd, but I think any one of the six just mentioned could fill that bill.

At the safety spot there are options. I am guessing that Wisniewski will start at the free safety spot and Lewis or Jordan at the strong safety position. McCarty should start at the star and I keep wondering when Ramon-Edwards is going to force himself on the field. Behind Wisniewski and Lewis/Jordan, I’m not entirely sure who is next in line. Regardless, I think there’s a lot of quality players here and I think that the fact that there weren’t a ton of transfers in at the safety spot is an indication that the staff thought that they liked what they did last year or liked the overall talent.