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Texas Tech Red Raider Notes 08-22-07: Woods is Back

By Seth C

Texas Tech Football:

Shannon Woods is back . . . sorta. LAJ's Don Williams notes that Shannon Woods and Kobey Lewis are co-starters for the Red Raiders. As you may recall Woods was benched in favor of Lewis after the spring game, but now Woods has regained the favor of Coach Leach:

"He worked like crazy in the off-season, and I think he's playing as good now as I've ever seen him play," Leach said Tuesday. "He's fast. He's explosive. He's probably more physical now than I've seen him."

Here's how Leach intends on using both Woods and Lewis:

"Right now, play them both," Leach said. "If one gets hot, play him a little more. It's hard to split them based on what they've done in practice. We do plan to play them both. Anytime you get that, we're better. Taurean (Henderson) and Johnnie Mack together (in 2004) was a little bit better than Taurean by himself."

That's good news for Red Raider fans, as Lewis is a nice runningback, but Woods has the potential to be great.

In Don's Tech Notes, the offensive line is mentioned again as offensive line coach believes that Rylan Reed, Shawn Byrnes and Brandon Carter graded out the best during this fall camp. Coach Moore on the Reed and Carter:

"Rylan Reed has really been a surprise, because he's been very steady," Moore said. "Not made many mistakes."

Snip

"Brandon Carter really had a great camp," Moore said. "He's really hard on himself. He wants to be perfect. He wants to be a great player. He's been real steady all camp."

Don also notes that supplanted lineman Marlon Winn is now anxious to attempt to retain his starting position. That's good news that he hasnt' lost the fight.

SAEN's Brent Zwerneman has a number of articles on Texas Tech this morning.
  • The first is his Texas Tech Report, which details where the team finished and looking ahead. Also included are players to watch, including L.A. Reed and Michael Crabtree as well as a 2-deep depth chart, which isn't completely accurate.

  • An article on Graham Harrell and the spring competition. There's some real interesing things here. First, I love Harrell's reaction:
    "I just laughed," he said after a recent practice. "I think that's what most people did as well. That's just how coach likes to stir things up. I guess he just gets bored and decides to do stuff like that every now and then."

    I like the fact that Harrell is somewhat unaffected by Coach Leach, but then Leach came back with this quote:

    "Potts can throw some balls that (Harrell) can't," Leach said. "Potts can throw some balls that if Graham practiced for 10 years he's not going to be able to throw. Potts has some juice in his arm that Graham doesn't have."

    I don't have any doubt that this program and quarterback situation is in good hands for the foreseeable future and on some level I like how Leach puts pressure on Harrell to perform. Besides, playing time is the only chip that a coach can play to threaten a talented player so there's certainly some method to Mike's motivation.

  • Finally Brent presents a short primer on the Texas Tech offense. This article includes some interesting points on how Harrell will call a play at the line of scrimmage. Harrell uses the phrase, "attacking leverage", quite a bit, but the idea of course is that the Texas Tech offense attacks the weakness presented by the defense. A good read.

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