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Texas Tech Sunday Morning Football Notes - Alive For 24 Hours Edition

By Seth C

Texas Tech Football:

Lots of general impressions from yesterday's Red-Black Scrimmage, and I'll probably do that in a separate post. Feel free to post your thoughts here. If time (and wife) permits, I'll watch the scrimmage again this afternoon. Before we get to the news I wanted to give a shout-out to RaiderAde and Flags Over Raiderland for Red-Black Scrimmage thoughts and coverage. Now, the news.

Incredibly meaningful stats from yesterday's game.

Per LAJ's Don Williams, and you can see the video below,Mike Leach wasn't happy with yesterday's performance by either first unit. Here's the very quotable Leach:

"Our (starters) did not look good," Leach said after the annual spring game Saturday at Jones AT&T Stadium. "I didn't think our first defense did, and I didn't think our first offense did.

"So we're going to scrimmage on Monday. Hell, if I have to keep them an extra hour it doesn't bother me. I'm going to be alive for 24 hours (Monday). If they have to spend it all with me, it's just as well. I've got to spend it with somebody."

The fact that Leach isn't happy doesn't bother me one bit. Leach can't let these guys leave for the summer knowing that they don't need to improve. You've got to keep these guys motivated through the summer and criticizing a performance that certainly had it's ups and downs isn't the worst thing ever. I'm guessing that Leach has been doing this long enough to know that it can be difficult to motivate college kids who think they rule the world.

If anything, Leach is showing quite a bit of bravado, claiming he's going to be alive for 24 hours on Monday. Kinda taunting the big guy, right? (I hope everyone realizes I'm kidding.)

Let them work out the kinks on Monday. I've got no problem with that.

Here's senior defensive end/linebacker Daniel Howard on the job Ruffin McNeill did:

"He just called some stunts that allowed me to run and blitz without reading," Howard said. "Luckily, the play was on me, and I made it both times - three times, actually. I like it a lot, because it reminds me of high school, when we used to blitz a lot, and it allowed me to run without reading a lot and just make plays."

Leach, not overreacting in the least:

"Our first offense, we can barely take a snap," Leach said. "We can't convert third down certainly, and we have a complete inability to make routine plays."

Snip

"I think their head's in the newspaper," Leach said. "I think those guys are reading too many press clippings, buying into everyone saying how good they are. They haven't played a down yet this year. They haven't proven a thing. We don't know that we can beat Lubbock High School right now."

In Don's blog, Raider Rants, he pulls a Lee Corso with the defense, "not so fast my friend," saying that there were a number of important parts of the offense missing on Saturday. No Vasquez, Reed or Eric Morris. Williams also notes that the crowd at the Red-Black Scrimmage was fairly impressive.

In Williams' Red Raiders Football Notebook, there's a ton of excellent notes.

I didn't notice the play of Sonier at first blush, but Williams noted that Sonier had 6 tackles, including one behind the line of scrimmage and intercepted a pass. Sonier dislocated a wrist last week, but still played:

"I dislocated my left wrist about two days ago,'' he said. "I popped a couple of painkillers and just went back out there today. I was going to go regardless. But I was just glad it wasn't that bad and I was able to play through it.''

Also of note was the play of Sam Fehoko, who was all over the field and easy to spot (long flowing locks of hair from the helmet). There's going to be some good competition at the middle linebacker spot if the backups continue to make plays.

LAJ's Adam Zuvanich talks with running backs coach Seth Littrell about the running back competition. Here's Littrell:

"I'm like the public. I want to know, too," Littrell said. "I know everybody else wants me to give them an answer on who I think's better, but I don't know. I really don't know, and that's as honest as I can be. I just think it's a matter of who's going to be the most consistent, who's going to make plays and who fits in our offense the best at the time when we need them."

In the article, Leach mentions that Woods is the team's best blocker and Batch acknowledges he needs to do a better job of punching the ball in the endzone. Again, all things to work on over the summer.

Fox34's Jarrod "Guns" Edwards has your post scrimmage thoughts from Mike Leach, and as noted above, he wasn't happy with the performance of either first team.

FWST's Dwain Price got out to the spring game (the only DFW paper to do so, and we thank you for that) and he thinks the defense is going to hold up for the entire year.

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