The Week Ahead: Abilene Christian vs. Texas Tech

The Basics

Teams: Abilene Christian Wildcats vs. Texas Tech Red Raiders
Date & Time: Saturday, September 5, 2026 @ 6:00 p.m.
Location: Galaxy Stadium | Lubbock, Texas
TV & Streaming:FS1
Line: Texas Tech -42.5

Welcome to game week. There’s going to be a lot to digest . . . after an actual game. I don’t think that it is beneficial to try to preview anything any longer more than what I’ve already done. Those things are all linked below and you can click as you please.

We do need to dive into Abilene Christian a bit before the week starts. The Wildcats lost a close game to Lamar last week and I’m not sure what to make of that. The Cardinals have one of their best teams, they were ranked #20 and ACU was playing in Beaumont. I know this sounds like excuses, but I’m not here to defend or represent ACU. ACU actually out-gained Lamar, but the problem was two interceptions for ACU, and ACU may have switched quarterbacks, possibly starting Tucker Parks who was 4 of 8 with 2 picks and possibly inserted John David Black who was much better, 15 of 25 for 142 yards and 2 touchdowns. Thus, I’d expect Black to start this week.

As you all know, Keith Patterson is the head coach at ACU, the former Texas Tech defensive coordinator. There’s a few interesting names on the staff, including Graham Harrell as the co-offensive coordinator along with Joel Filani, they are obviously position coaches at quarterback and receiver. Sam Bennett is the defensive coordinator, he’s the son of long-time defensive coordinator Phil Bennett, who is good friends with Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire. Clark Harrell, who is the brother to Sam, is the running backs coach, and Joseph Plunk is a defensive assistant, who also was a defensive back at Texas Tech.

The News:

Texas Tech Football: No. 12 Texas Tech opens 2026 season Saturday

The official preview and depth chart.

ESPN’s Max Olson with a terrific article on Will Hammond, who does not lack confidence heading into the season:

“I love that narrative that people think we’re going to take a step back, that people think this team isn’t going to be what it was supposed to be in January,” Hammond said. “That’s something that fuels us every day. I’m really excited to prove that narrative wrong.”

The Red Raiders are rolling with a kid from Austin, Texas, who dreamed of playing for the BYU Cougars while growing up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a family of BYU graduates and Eagle Scouts. When Hammond showed up at a Texas Tech camp in the summer of 2022, his other options were UTSA and Incarnate Word.

The 16-year-old kid McGuire and his coaches extended a scholarship offer to that day was impressively precocious. He made the same first impression on Will Compton when Compton arrived as Hutto High School’s new head coach that summer.

“I’ve got my boxes on the desk on my first day on the job and he comes and sits down and says, ‘All right, Coach, when you’re game-planning, what do you do on your third-down calls?'” Compton recalled. “I was like, ‘Well, I guess we’re doing this right now.’ We started talking ball. But it wasn’t like, ‘What kind of offense do we run?’ It was, ‘What’s your third-down procedure in deciding playcalls?’ He wants to talk football 24/7 and he talks it at such a high level.”

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams on on the staff’s plans for Tommy Castellanos:

Thomas Castellanos knows how to make a good impression on his new Texas Tech football coaches — one way being, don’t leave the building until after they have.

“He was up ’til 9:30, past a lot of the coaches, last night,” offensive coordinator Mack Leftwich said on Monday, Aug. 31, “trying to watch extra film and learn as much as he can as fast as he can.”

CBS Sports’ Shehan Jeyarajah with playoff predictions:

Texas Tech: I’m not sold on Texas Tech. Sorry. The Red Raiders return 13 starters, which is fantastic, and despite outside concerns about Brenden Sorsby leaving because of gambling allegations, the quarterback spot should be fine with Will Hammond. My issue is Tech playing with its food against a weak schedule. They can’t afford a regular-season loss, and I suspect they’ll fall once this season: at Oklahoma State. BYU is my favorite to win the Big 12. The weak schedule will kill Tech when it comes time to seed the CFP field. — Brandon Marcello

The Non-Transcript:

We are back. Fun to watch football, but fun to play football.
Last full padded practice was chippy and are ready to hit someone else. Fun to see familiar faces and one of the greatest Red Raiders of all time and I love his Dad and good to see Clark and Joe and Plunk and Patterson.
The standard is the standard. When you step between the white lines there is just one way to play. Referenced Paramount+ and think our fanbase and others will see a different side of me. When I am outside the white lines I joke a lot, but inside the white lines the intensity ramps up tremendously. Whoever is out on the field, expect them to play we play.
Probably the healthiest I’ve had a team, had guys out for the season, but are really healthy. Trey White got banged up and is week-to-week, but nothing major. Feel really good. Mike Ramirez and Dr. Crawford do a great job. This building makes a huge impact on our players.
The guy that didn’t start, the quarterback that came in went 11-11 and made a huge difference and expect him to be the starter. I present the opponent every Tuesday. They have 4 Texas Tech Red Raiders on the team, Houston, Minnesota, etc. Coach Patterson has done a great job of winning at the FCS level.
Mack talked to Will Hammond, then I met with Ben Roberts and Sheridan Wilson with Will, but Will already knew what was happening. This day and age, you don’t deal with as many athletes like Will Hammond, he said if something happened to him, he would hate it for Ben and Wilson, he’s thinking about the team.
Re. Hammond, hope that he’s not playing the last snap like the last time we played ACU, if it wasn’t for Cofield making a play we lose that game. I think I was praying looking at the ground. Will has taken every 1st team rep and will let him spin it. We’re going to run our offense through the game, attack every play, and try to find our identity as a football team.
You make your biggest improvement from game 1 to game 2 and expect ACU to play really well. Sometimes you are trying to figure out who you are and what you do well. It helps us know who we are playing and have some good game film, they are multiple on defense and move around a lot on defense.
The mock game, I saw LSU, smart what Lane did, he took it to another level prep-wise. We started on Friday night, ate as a team, explained everything, went to the movies, we were offense and defense. Saturday went well, not full speed. The guys were locked-in and if you are not, Kenny Perry will make sure you are locked in and ready to go.
Would like to see all of them, Kirk Francis has had a great camp, Lloyd “Chubb” Jones has had a great camp. Would great to see all of them as long as we aren’t banged up or hurt. Tommy has played a lot of football and been in 3 different systems and can pick up things fast. He has a great personality and spent time with Lindsey Scott and Garrett McGuire and get to understand what the offense is about. Excited to see young guys play. Can’t wait to see Quinten Joyner out there.
I made contact with all of the new NFL players and 18 made active rosters and 6 have a chase. Cole Wisniewski with the practice squad, Josh Kelly with the Texans, Bralyn Lux with the practice squad with the Bengals. I wish someone would give Behren Morton a chance to kick field goals.
We actually worked it a lot in the spring and then getting banged up we didn’t use it. I’ve never done that because I would hate to see one of those big boys cover. If you have your quarterback out there punting you can get o those braces real fast.
We have a couple of guys we have trained on both sides, Adam Trick will go to the dog position, Ansel Nedore starts at field, Jamond Mathis could start there. We’ll go with the old guys banked. LaDamion has done a great job, he’s a football guy.
Re. Trey White just week-to-week, turned the corner against Howard and Jett, will be how he feels and how it doesn’t continue to bother him through the year.
Castellanos, by Oregon State he’ll have full grasp of the offense. I do think we will end up in every game, he’s dynamic with the ball in his hand, true triple option offense. It’s been good and has a great personality. We reached out to a lot of people about him. I do think our locker room could handle it. Gus Mahlzan reached out to me and they all said he is a really good person.
Winning the Big 12 is the bare minimum and win in the playoffs. We have to continue to take steps with this program. Some of our toughest games are at home. We’ve played really well at home and late in the season and continue to expect that.
The very last football school I walked off the field with Micah Hudson and told him to take a breath and play football, I think I put too much expectations on him and he put too much on himself. Last year he got back and learned a lot of respect, but even year 1 and 2 he was fighting to get no the field and he’s won the position and now just go relax and go be Micah Hudson. I feel for Juice and he’s going to have to manage lots of people. We have 3 good running backs and you’ll see 4 or 5, we are going to play a lot of receivers.
I will still never forget and take these moments for granted. Skyler Gill-Howard said last year that this is the first time he was going to play in front of a home sellout. That says a lot how lucky we are. A lot of respect for Lincoln Riley, but we’re lucky to play in front of a sellout.
We have a really good football team and a high care factor. Maybe because of the offseason and what was said about our integrity.
Peyton Morgan, Oliver Miles, Jordan Rogers. Davin Martin at cornerback has had a great camp. I’d be surprised you don’t see him early. He’s done well. Maddox Quiller reminds me of BJ Jordan. I expect Maddox to play this year. Donovan Webb, expect to play him on special teams. When you have young guys who are like that, they will play early.
I’m excited and as excited when I was 31 years old and ran on the field to play Coach Davis against The Colony. So nervous and excited, 23 years later. We did not play to our standard against Oregon. That’s where we need to be to be at that level.
Grant McCasland, everyone gets to see how animated he is. He has a much better mouth than I do, I don’t know that I’ve heard him cuss. You are going to see a more animated Coach McGuire. You see me chewing gum and writing notes and pretty stoic during the game. Grant and I are a lot alike, tough teams win. When you have like-minded people, he has a lot of players’ respect and they know how hard he coaches and how he practices. He did a great job and gave a great message.
In the running back room we don’t care who is out there, someone will start the game, but all 3 of those guys are starters in our eyes. Am excited about that room. Am going to see times when guys are in the game together with J’Koby. We should have a fresh and physical rotation. I’ve never been on a team this deep. It doesn’t matter who starts, Cofield with Bryce Butler, Holmes and Jojo, Corey Platt played a ton of football last year and he’s backing up Romaine, I’m going to feel great about that. Brock is playing fast and is 240 and looks incredible. It is every room that you can walk into and they are going to play at a high level.

What’s Next:

This Week in the Big 12 & National Games of the Week

Bethune-Cookman @ UCF 9/3 @ 6:00 pm on ESPN+
Colorado @ Georgia Tech 9/3 @ 7:00 pm on ESPN
Idaho @ Utah 9/3 @ 8:00 pm on ESPNU
Long Island U. @ Kansas 9/4 @ 7:00 pm on ESPNU
Oregon State @ Houston 9/5 @ 11:00 am on ESPN
Coastal Carolina @ West Virginia 9/5 @ 11:00 am on TNT
Southeast Missouri St. @ Iowa State 9/5 @ 12:00 pm on ESPN+
Baylor @ Auburn 9/5 @ 2:30 pm on ABC
Boston College @ Cincinnati 9/5 @ 2:30 pm on FOX
Oklahoma State @ Tulsa 9/5 @ 2:45 pm on ESPNU
Nicholls @ Kansas State 9/5 @ 6:00 pm on ESPN+
Utah Tech @ BYU 9/5 @ 7:00 pm on ESPN+
Morgan State @ Arizona State 9/5 @ 8:00 pm on ESPN+
Northern Arizona @ Arizona 9/5 @ 8:30 pm on ESPN+

Big 12 Game of the Week: Maybe the Baylor @ Auburn game is the most intriguing to me personally. We’re going to find out if DJ Lagway (6-3/235) is the real deal as quarterback, while Auburn is going to start Byrum Brown (6-3/235), who followed his head coach Alex Golesh (who I had no idea he was the head coach) from South Florida to the Plains. I’m also interested in the Colorado @ Georgia Tech game and I’ll be cheering for Boston College for no reason at all against Cincinnati. The only game that’s been played is the TCU loss to North Carolina in Dublin, Ireland, and what a disappointing loss for the Horned Frogs. They had 11 penalties and Craig may not have been what TCU hoped. That’s always a problem, you spend an entire offseason with “the guy” and then he may not be the guy, at least the guy to get the ball down the field.

National Games of the Week: There’s a few games that look fun. Please note that some of these games are on Saturday, Sunday & Monday. It’s going to be a big weekend for college football.

Clemson @ LSU 9/5 @ 6:30 pm on ABC
Wisconsin @ Notre Dame 9/6 @ 6:30 pm on NBC
Louisville @ Ole Miss 9/6 @ 6:30 pm on ABC
SUM @ Florida State 9/7 @ 6:30 pm on ESPN

Education

Former USC and Pittsburgh quarterback Max Browne did a nice breakdown of Will Hammond (he accidentally pulls video of Behren Morton as well, but he’s quick to point that out). I thought this was good and worth your time.