On the Gridiron

I hope you take the time to go back and check out the Texas Tech Football Notebook from Saturday. Bill Connelly has his Big 12 preview and the Pro Football Focus article is good if you are into analytics.

Head coach Joey McGuire joined The Triple Option podcast with Mark Stone, Urban Meyer, and Mark Ingram. I honestly don’t know what to think about Urban Meyer, he’s a great coach, but don’t know what happened in Jacksonville. Maybe I should qualify that and say he “was a great college coach” and leave it at that. In any event, they invited McGuire to ask one piece of advice from the panel and Urban said (paraphrasing) he said that there’s no better motivator than anger and he would absolutely build up the idea that the SEC and Big Ten don’t think that anyone, particularly Texas Tech belongs in the College Football Playoff. I think anger wears after a while, it takes real effort to keep that up.

CBS Sports’ Shehan Jeyarajah on how the Big 12 hopes to produce multiple CFP bids.

CBS Sports’ Brad Crawford ranks the Big 12 quarterbacks and I’d say that Behren Morton’s health and the pass defense, are for me, the reasons to hold back on the Texas Tech hype:

Let it be known — Morton is not a mid-tier quarterback in the Big 12 (like he’s placed here). He will prove as much as a senior, according to coach Joey McGuire. Texas Tech knows the window to win big in Lubbock is open after signing the league’s top-ranked portal class. The first Red Raider quarterback to start all 12 regular-season games since Patrick Mahomes’ final season in 2016 and nearly, Morton had a 4:1 touchdown to interception ratio last year.

Ranked ahead of Morton is Utah’s Devon Dampier, TCU’s Josh Hoover, Kansas State’s Avery Johnson, Iowa State’s Rocco Becht, Baylor’s Sawyer Robertson, and Arizona State’s Sam Leavitt. FYI, Morton is the 72nd best quarterback according to ESPN’s QBR and in the Big 12? He was 12th best. I know that QBR isn’t the end-all metric for a quarterback, but it is something and he needs to show significant improvement.

On the Diamond

Texas Tech received a commitment from Georgia Tech INF/P Connor Shouse (6-1/175), who had just 34 plate appearances last year, hit .265 with .559 slug and .432 OPB along with 3 innings pitched and a 9.00 ERA. Shouse was the No. 22 shortstop and 83rd best prospect coming out of high school last year. Double-T’s 97.3’s Jamie Lent has done a much better job of keeping track of the players transferring into the program.