10 Things: Texas Tech 42, Kansas 17

1. Game Links:

2. Gettin’ Dickey With It. Man, Robert Griffin III (the color announcer) loved his catch-phrase, but it didn’t make it any less true, that Cameron Dickey was electric with 21 carries and 263 yards with 2 touchdowns, including a 71-yarder and a 55-yarder that basically sealed the game. Dickey averaged 12.5 yards a rush and was part of a rushing effort that ran for 372 yards with 4 touchdowns. And I was initially going to go with a heading of a Dominant 2nd Half, but we’ll save that for a bit later as I tend to think that that the 5th best rushing game from Cam Dickey deserves some praise.

3. Grades.

C	PASS OFFENSE
This just wasn’t happening. Morton actually looked pretty good before his ankle turn, but Hammond was rough and as much as I think that Will Hammond is going to be a special player, there’s some work that needs to happen in terms of seeing defenses. Hammond’s longest pass completion was an interception, but other than that, it was 12 yards and he missed on his last 4 attempts.
A+	RUN OFFENSE
Difficult to grade this any differently. Texas Tech ran for 372, averaged 9.3 yards a carry and 4 touchdowns. Texas Tech averaged 11.9 yards every time they rushed the ball on 1st down and for the game was 20 rush attempts for 238 yards and every rushing touchdown was on a 1st down. You don’t see that every day.
B	PASS DEFENSE
I continue to be a bit concerned with the pass defense, but maybe I’m just trying to find things to be critical of as I write 10 Things. The passing defense gave up 176 passing yards in the 1st half, but just 69 in the 2nd half and that includes just 16 passing yards in the 3rd quarter alone. But there were some big plays and open receivers when Kansas had time, but they had almost zero time to throw the ball in the 2nd half.
A+	RUN DEFENSE
Total stats were 38 rush attempts and 1.9 yards per attempt for the game, that would total 74 yards. Kansas had 6, 22, 36, and 10 rushing yards each quarter. The defensive line was dominant, and the reason why that looks so great is because there were 92 yards of sack yards last night and 111 in tackles for loss (which includes sack yardage).
A	SPECIAL TEAMS
Kinda tough to complain here. Averaged 40 yards a punt and 2 were inside the 20, went 2-2 on field goals and Coy Eakin had 3 punt returns for 53 yards. I think that all but 1 kickoff was a touchback and the lone kickoff return for Kanas went for a total of 12 yards.
B+	COACHING
Maybe some mismanagement at the end of the 1st half, but again, that’s being super critical when you won by 25 and the spread was 14 with a back-up quarterback who couldn’t exactly complete a pass. I think the passing game is something that will need to be solved really quickly and I tend to think that ankle for Morton isn’t going to be good to go for Saturday night (I’m pessimistic about ankle twists, nothing against Morton).

4. Tortillas. This was apparently a point of emphasis and Lance Leipold had harsh words for McGuire after the game. An allegation of a pocket knife being thrown in addition to tortillas. Regardless, this was a big deal and it did hurt the football team. I was thinking that after the first kickoff and tortillas were throw, they would penalize Texas Tech and let’s say that they were at the 30, they’d move them back to the 15 and it would be 1st and 10 at the 15. But that’s not how this worked (I don’t know what I was thinking) because the penalty does push you back 15 yards, but you start out 1st and 25 at the 15 yard line (assuming you’re at the 30) and that means you’re essentially guaranteed to punt on that drive. That’s a significant penalty.

After the game, head coach Joey McGuire said that when you throw the tortillas after the 1st kickoff, you’re making this about you rather than the football team and I’d agree. I know that there’s no students likely reading STP (I think we generally trend on the older side of things) so these thoughts will likely fall on deaf ears, but McGuire is right.

And McGuire pleaded with the students on Tuesday during the weekly presser and asked them to just be a loud as humanly possible when Texas Tech was on defense and not throw anything after the 1st kickoff. I don’t know what else McGuire can do and for Leipold to get upset at McGuire was silly. Leipold should worry about the middle of his defense more than tortillas, but that’s his choice. McGuire didn’t encourage anything after the 1st toss that and he’s been actively discouraging it since the start of the season and opened his Tuesday presser expressly addressing it.

5. Now We Get to the Dominant 2nd Half. We briefly talked about this, but Kansas was held scoreless in the 2nd half and had a total of 115 yards in the 2nd half. That’s on 38 total plays and that’s good for 3 yards a play. Kansas was 12 of 18 passing the ball, which sounds really good, but then when you realize that was giving up 69 passing yards, good for 3.8 yards per attempt, you realize that this was an absolute beatdown. And, let’s just add to this, as Kansas had the ball for nearly 19 minutes in the 2nd half (compared to just 11 for Texas Tech). Offensively, Texas Tech had 233 yards in the 2nd half, which included 208 running the ball. Texas Tech had just 7 passing attempts good for 25 yards, so they weren’t doing a ton passing the ball either. Regardless, Texas Tech averaged 8.6 yards per play and had 3 2nd half touchdowns.

6. Defense Dominated. As good as Cam Dickey was, the collective defense was absolutely incredible. Skyler Gill-Howard goes down and there is no drop-off. Jacob Rodriguez was questionable heading into the game, but he was not questionable at all during the game. Rodriguez alone had 14 tackles, 1 sack and 1.5 tackles for a loss. The defense forced 3 fumbles, but only recovered 1 (that’s just the way the ball bounces). Romello Height and David Bailey were absolutely unstoppable and to scheme them up to be on the same side is diabolical, or to delay one of them is incredibly problematic for opposing offenses. Between the two of them they had 5 sacks and it says they only had 1 quarterback pressure, but that’s not true at all.

Oh, and when Gill-Howard goes down, A.J. Holmes goes ahead and gets a sack and a half and picks up the slack.

7. Stats.

Kansas had the ball for 36 minutes to just 23 for Texas Tech.
Kansas actually gained 169 rushing yards, but lost 95. Sack adjusted Kansas actually averaged 5.7 yards a rush (while Texas Tech had 9.6).
Things I don’t like. Kansas had 111 yards after catch yesterday.
Texas Tech had just 68 plays, and 40 of them were rushing plays.
Only 34% of Texas Tech’s plays were passing downs, which means they stayed ahead of the sticks. But Kansas only had 32% of their downs as passing downs as well, so . . . I’ll let you draw the inference.
Kansas was 7 of 18 on 3rd downs, while Texas Tech was just 6 of 14. Both teams struggled here, the average down and distance for Kansas was 8.8 on 3rd down, while it was 7.4 for Texas Tech.
Kansas had just 6 penalties, but 3 were holding penalties and 1 was a false start. I am sure that the combination of Bailey, Height & Co. had something to do with that.

8. Idle Thoughts.

Texas Tech had 2 red zone opportunities in the 1st half that were harpooned by 2 Howard Sampson holding penalties. This has been a bit of a theme this year. I think that I’m rarely critical of specific players, but this is an easy one to where I’m not making a judgement call about how a player is doing, Sampson is being called for it.
Leipold should also think about special teams in addition to the middle of his defense. When Texas Tech and Johncarlos Miller rushed for a 2-point conversion, that wasn’t trickery, that was just math. Kansas didn’t put enough guys on the swinging gate so Texas Tech did exactly what they were supposed to do.
After the game, McGuire said that J’Koby Williams was a bit banged up after last week and add to the fact that Dickey was in a groove. Williams seemed fine and that’s quite the luxury.
Texas Tech had 5 passes broken up: Ben Roberts, Brice Pollack, Cole Wisniewski, Amier Boyd, and Peyton Morgan.
The leading receiver was Caleb Douglas, 6 for 55 yards. Terrence Carter, Jr. had the only touchdown grab, but he also had 2 drops.
Texas Tech had 13 big rushing plays (more than 10 yards) for 306 total yards.

9. Coach Comments.

No transcript from the official site.

10. Tortilla Tossin’ Players of the Game.

Cam Dickey easily gets this one. 279 all-purpose yards, 263 rushing and 16 receiving.

Jacob Rodriguez gets this, he’s just so dominant.

Romello Height and David Bailey were special. The entire line was great and if I start rattling off a couple of them and then forget, I’m doing them a disservice.