Red Raider Gridiron | Tough Receivers and Snyder's Magic

PHYSICAL RECEIVERS | LAJ's Nick Kosmider writes about the physical receivers for Texas Tech and how they have made a difference:

While certain aspects of Tech’s attack are predicated on quick throws and timing routes, Ward (6-foot, 204 pounds) and Moore (6-foot-4, 216), afford Doege the ability to stretch the field. It also gives him the freedom to take chances, knowing that if his big receivers aren’t able to come down with the ball at its highest point, the defender won’t, either.

“My job is easy,” Doege said. “Just don’t overthrow them. Just give them a chance to go get the ball. When they’re physical like that and they’re big, clearly they can go up there and get a ball. Even if they’re covered, and then it’s their job to kind of secure it.”

TOUCHDOWN BREAKDOWN | You can watch the weekly series touchdown breakdown or you can read LAJ's Don Williams account. The visual makes more sense in this instance.

Touchdown Breakdown: TCU (via techathletics)

HIGHLIGHTING TEXAS TECH | Yesterday ESPN's Gene Wojciechowski focused quite a bit on Texas Tech under a segment called "Big Man On Campus" as a team that was exceeding expectations. The one sentence that made me laugh is this:

He has a knack of winning these kind of games. He coaches fearlessly. And his teams follow his lead.

I think that some of you would strongly disagree that Tuberville coaches fearlessly and I don't think that I have ever once thought to use the adjective "fearless" when describing Tuberville as a head coach for Texas Tech. Right now, he's only won one of these games, against Oklahoma last year, so I think this idea that Tuberville knows how to knock off the giant is a bit misleading. Whatever, the press is good. ESPN also has a show called UNITE that runs late at night and had some social media highlights from Texas Tech's win.

SNYDER'S MAGIC | I have been trying for the longest time to try to figure out what makes Bill Snyder so successful and there were two excellent articles that were published last week that I saved that I thought you should read. Up first is this KansasCity.com article about how Snyder saved the town of Manhattan and the football program -- twice. You have to read the whole thing, but here's a bit:

The magic of Snyder is not in what he does but in what he creates. It’s an environment where his coaches and players are so invested in each other, so bonded by a common purpose that nobody stops to think how crazy it is that a 73-year-old man is working 18 hours and connecting with teenagers to build a national football power largely from the other powers’ leftovers.

Then there was this ESPN article about how Snyder recruits to Kansas St. It's interesting because I think that there are certain aspects of this that Texas Tech is attempting to employ, especially in this recruiting class.

LINKS | SI's Andy Staples has Texas Tech at #9 . . . Bring On The Cats looks at QB Collin Klein's Heisman watch . . . RRS.com's Jeff Gunter with this week's post-mortem . . . Turfburner's Jay Beck writes about the challenge of facing K-State . . . and a FSSW article about how Tuberville is finally delivering on his promises . . .