10 Things: Texas Tech 53, Arizona State 25

1. Game Links:

2. Grades.

A	PASS OFFENSE
It’s tough to complain about any aspect of the team, we can sort of slice things a handful of ways, but Will Hammond threw for for 209 yards on 14 of 20 and it was game management where Hammond took a step.
A	RUN OFFENSE
When you run for 260 yards on 37 carries then you know that things have gone correctly. J’Koby Williams fumbled basically at the goal line, but he absolutely dominated this game.
B	PASS DEFENSE
Sort of averaging the 1st half and 2nd half, where the 1st half, the ASU quarterback was in a straight jacket, but the replacement was much better in the 2nd half. ASU was going to get yards and sort of call off the dogs to an extent, but the 2nd ASU QB threw for 256 and was 25 of 34. Also, the pass interference penalties are an issue. The pass rush had 6 sacks and 3 QB hurries along with 2 interceptions, another pick-6 and 6 pass break-ups.
A	RUN DEFENSE
The sack adjusted yards per rush for Arizona State was 4.4, but if you look at the stats, it says that Arizona State ran for 35 yards and 1.3 yards per rush, but that’s not accurate as ASU lost 67 yards on sacks. But the defense gave up just 95 yards to Arizona State and ASU only found time to run 20 times, which is what happens when you are down by 4 scores.
A	COACHING
The coordinators were fantastic and when teams make improvements over bye weeks, that’s a pretty good sign.

3. Reactionary. There may not be a sport that is more reactionary than football. I live in Dallas and the mood swings from week-to-week for Cowboy’s chatter is astounding. It is no different in college football. Prognosticators ready to declare what team is better after a win over what will end up being a mediocre team by the end of the season. After a game like yesterday, it’s natural to want to swing to the thought that Texas Tech has solved certain problems, the fast start and all of the other things, but almost immediately after the game, Joey McGuire said that there are things to clean up. And there are. HOWEVER . . . this team did take a nice step forward without taking 2 steps back. Texas Tech jumped all over Arizona State and they showed that they were a significantly better team than the Sun Devils. There was no coming back from what Texas Tech did Arizona State. I both can’t wait and shudder at the thought of seeing the hot-takes after this weekend where the SEC and Notre Dame may have been exposed. OR . . . maybe the Big 12 is really good at football, just as good as those other conferences.

4. A Transition. It’s not just the fact that Hammond looked better. Hammond managed the game really well. He didn’t throw bad passes, I can think of one that was a bit iffy. And maybe the biggest thing was that Hammond looked significantly more comfortable running the ball. He was decisive in making decisions and I thought there were times this year where he looked like a newborn deer, just unsure of himself. Yesterday, that was not the case. The stats aren’t necessarily great, just 18 of 26 for 232 yards and 1 touchdown with 8 rushes for 25 yards and 1 touchdown, but that’s really not the point. Hammond was better and that’s a good sign. Now, he will get to test this on the road in Cincinnati next week.

5. Turnovers. On paper, the defense stepped up and had 2 turnovers, including the aforementioned pick-6, but in addition to the 2 interceptions, Texas Tech forced Arizona State into 3 turnovers from missing it on 4th down and on their 3 drives that resulted in punts for the day, those drives were 3 plays for 5 yards, 3 plays for -2 yards, and 3 plays for -5 yards. All 3 punts, both picks, and 1 turnover on downs were in the 1st half. As much as the offense dominated the 1st half, the defense dominated as well.

6. J’Koby’s Day. It’s difficult to talk about this game without talking about how dominant J’Koby Williams was. The offense hums because Williams is a threat to break a play at any moment. It situations where Williams looks like there’s nothing there, he creates something out of nothing, making multiple defenders miss. Absolute silliness. Williams finished with just 11 carries for 165 yards, 15 yards a pop. Not a bad day at the office. Add in 2 touchdowns and that’s a really good day. Having Williams be an explosive threat from the get-go helps make the offense go and Cameron Dickey has his place on this team, but it seems incredibly clear to me that Williams should probably start the rest of the way.

7. Advanced Stats.

Texas Tech wasn’t great on 3rd downs, just 11 of 1, but the distance to go was just 4.8 yards. We talked about this before the game and that’s a huge improvement. Having that shorter distance. Defensively, ASU was facing 9 yards to go on average.
Arizona State had just 31% of their plays in Texas Tech’s territory, while Texas Tech had 73% of their plays in ASU territory.
Texas Tech was in passing downs, 2nd down with 8 to go or 3rd and 5+ to go, just 25% of the time.
Texas Tech averaged 9.2 yards on 1st down. That’s a good way to get that 3rd down shorter. Texas Tech also had 2 1st down touchdowns (as did Arizona State).

8. Idle Thoughts.

Some reporter is asking about momentum during the player presser and I personally think that momentum is not a real thing.
I loved the reverse to Simmons on 4th down. If I take anything away from this game and it is something that I think Leftwich needs to lean into sometimes, which is that a play like that, which is not a trick play in my book, can really make the defense question everything. We don’t see enough of things like that. Keep them honest.
Loved seeing Bryson Jones (who probably should have had a touchdowns) and Chase Campbell get some time.
Kenny Johnson catchign 7 for 120 was a lot of fun. He’s a terrific player.
We haven’t talked defense enough thus far, but Austin Romaine led the team with 8 tackles, including half a sack and 1 tackle for a loss and 2 pass break-ups. Don’t look know, but in the 2nd half, he was running Mike with Platt in his spot and Platt looks pretty good.
We probably do need to have a conversation about pass interference on the defense. Both weren’t good at all. And since we’re talking about bad things, that long ASU touchdown in the 1st quarter where Davin Martin maybe should have had that receiver and no one went with him until Esquerra tried to come over from the top. Esquerra has to make that play.
The defensive line is not as explosive as it was last year, but they are stout. Guyton continues to be an absolute freak. Anderson is making plays. Ibirogba and Laventure are incredibly solid.
Stone Harrigonton went 4 of 5 with an uncharacteristic miss from 36 yards.
Will Karoll didn’t do anything to screw up his average, a lone punt of 65 yards, inside the 20 (I think at the 1) and he’s such a weapon.

9. Coach Comments.

Texas Tech used to put all of Coach McGuire’s comments on a sheet and I’d copy and paste them. I wish they would go back to that. Arizona State does that and I thought that some of these quotes were telling about Texas Tech.

On being surprised by how the first half went
“Shocking for me. Absolutely shocking. We had a good week of practice. Our guys practiced really hard. They came out with great energy, but you can’t have all those (bad) plays, you have to make certain plays in the game that are critical. You can’t spot them seven points. You have a fourth-and-1, they’re in the backfield, we have to finish, right? Fourth-and-1 for us, we have to execute the plan. We have to do things better. Then we got to tackle them. At the end of the day, we couldn’t tackle them in the first half and that was not something I was expecting to be a problem.”

On the disconnect from last week to this week
“Obviously we’re not coaching things at the level we used to coach them. We’re not getting through to the level we used to get through, and we got to be able to connect and get through at that level because it’s not getting through. We got to get through. We gave up 300 yards rushing or something, probably. That kid had 15 yards per carry. Unbelievable game by them and they had a good plan and they blocked well and you got to give them a lot of credit, but you gotta be able to tackle, you gotta be able to fit runs and, it’s back to back Power Four opponents that we can’t do either at all.”

On fixing the mismatch at the line of scrimmage
“Nobody magically gonna come save us, right? So we gotta look at it as a staff and say, OK, where are we getting beat? We got cut out when they ran an outside zone play where we got cut out versus boundary pressure where our three technique didn’t cross the guard. Then they turned us back on one of them. We’ve got to be able to cross the guard. We can’t get cut out on some of the stuff that we had in the zone pressure game. We had some gut crosses, pressures where we had a guy there and they made really good plays at running back. So I think for us we’ve got to look at, OK, what have we done well, and we almost got to double down on that because we’re not doing a lot well. So if we’re doing something well, we may as well double down on that. And then for us, we’ve got to figure out which players are the guys that continually make plays and if we have to shake things up, we may have to shake things up to try to improve in that category because I think we’ve given up 500 yards of rushing in the last two games versus conference opponents and not like 500 yards versus a team that’s pounding the rock, 500 yards versus a team that’s playing balanced football.”

10. Tortilla Tossin’ Players of the Game.

J’Koby gets the 1st tortilla, he had 200 all-purpose yards, 165 rush, 8 receiving and 27 on kickoff returns with 2 touchdowns.

Will Hammond and Kenny Johnson share these tortillas, a nice step forward for Hammond and Johnson is proving he’s a dominant receiver in the Big 12 as he’s showing up game after game.

I don’t know who to give this to on defense. John Curry, Ben Roberts, and Austin Romaine are all so terrific at the linebacker spots. Holmes with his 1.5 sacks was unstoppable. Loved seeing Guyton, Ibirogba and White each get sacks. So many standout moments from this game.