Four Down Territory: Texas Tech punked by Baylor

No window dressing, that was an abysmal performance. Let’s break down what went wrong.

First Down: The offensive line was tragically bad

Kittley called a terrible game, and Morton played badly. But neither of those two got any help at all from the “big” boys upfront.

Baylor took their manhood and slapped them around. No way to say it otherwise, they just outright stunk on Saturday. You will lose every remaining game with an effort like that. Besides just getting physically whipped and out techniqued, they couldn’t do the day one stuff right either. Baylor ran about a thousand little twists and stuns, the line miscommunicated all of them.

I have seen bad offensive line play this year, they hit a new low.

Second Down: The defense looked undisciplined

Tyree Wilson has a future on Sunday’s but he sure is not showing this tape off. He was washed out of tosses, outside zones, and counters over and over. As were his other friends on the line. Linebackers were routinely unable to scrape outside, and the secondary did not come down to help.

Baylor ran a handful of running schemes all night, Tech never adjusted to them. Worst coaching effort by far for the defensive staff, and a bright spot of the season (the defensive improvement) took a step back.

Third Down: The staff’s unwillingness to just pick a quarterback is killing the offense

At this point, I honestly do not care who starts. But pick that guy, and keep the other quarterbacks off the field. Both Smith and Shough came in cold, and threw picks. Smith’s was especially egregious because of the bizarre decision to let a backup QB run the offense just for the sake of speed after Morton put together his two best drives of the night.

These cute packages are just dumb, pick a guy and let him win the game! It does the team no good that every week we do not know who is starting. It is sucking the confidence out of the room that they feel so much pressure every week, and this rotation nonsense never should have been used. Pick a quarterback and coach him up with every available rep, this isn’t a concept I expected to see very smart coaches struggle with. The oldest saying in football is having two quarterbacks is the same as not having one. We have three, so we have super none. Splitting reps means these guys can’t get comfortable or really progress as we want.

Fourth Down: RUN. THE. BALL.

Seriously, Tech’s offensive playcalling was hilariously bad against Baylor. Morton was rattled and the line couldn’t pass block to save their lives. What are the backs doing? Falling forward for 3-4 every carry. And time, and time, and time again we take the ball out of their hands and let Morton throw 15 incompletions. 164 yards between them with both over 6 yards per carry.

Your backs out gained all three of the quarterbacks, which is frankly insane. Try and guess if Tech threw the ball more, or ran it more. I can only scream into the sky so many times about just letting the freaking backs eat, but Kittley is ultimately ignoring reality to force his scheme into play.

And here is the other problem, Kittley is unbelievably boring at the design of running the ball. Look at all the movement and formations Baylor used to attack Tech. I, drunk at a party, could predict with near absolute certainty when Tech was going to elect to run the ball because of how basic the sets are.

This was the worst effort of the year by a wide margin, yet Tech has a lot of winnable games left. But this was a total team failure in front of a roaring home crowd, and that is unacceptable. Baylor punked you, outcoached you, and just wanted it more. TCU is next, Tech has a week to let all this piss them off and play with that fire we saw all season except last night. This staff has shown some strong bounce back ability, let’s see if they can coach the team up.