2012 Texas Tech Football – The 100 Days Preview

The 2012 Texas Tech Football season starts in 100 days. Deep breaths, everyone.

The 2011 season was a disaster in every sense of the word for Head Coach Tommy Tuberville and his Red Raiders. Injuries set the offense back a good month before the last two games of the season and a defense that did everything but defend broke the opposing teams side of the scoreboard with an astounding 39.3 points a game given up, good for 117th in Football Bowl Subdivision.

The Texas Tech Defense will be better than last season. I make this prediction solely on the fact that it cannot be statistically worse in 2012. Gone is the 4-2-5 experiment and gone is defensive coordinator Chad Glasgow back to Fort Worth with TCU. Texas Tech will be in a 4-3 defense under the direction of Art Kaufman, who joins the Red Raiders from North Carolina. Kaufman helped lead the Tar Heels to a Top 25 defense statistically and hopefully brings stability to a defense that has been anything but stable in two seasons. New recruits like middle linebacker Will Smith (Riverside CC), defensive back Bruce Jones, and defensive end Michael Starts (Waco La Vega) will add instant depth for the Red Raiders. Expect to hear Smith's name a lot as he will be the starter for Tech in the opener.

The Texas Tech Offense was one of the few bright spots in 2011 and moved the ball at will with the exception of the Iowa State and Oklahoma State games. Seth Doege will return as starting quarterback for his senior season along with a stable of receivers led by Alex Torres, Darrin Moore, Austin Zouzalik, and others will show numbers close to 4,000 yards for Tech in the passing game. Eric Stephens should be back after a terrible knee injury in the Texas A&M game to anchor the running game for Tech. Look for big numbers again out of the Texas Tech Offense.

Over the next few weeks, we will look at the twelve games on the Red Raider schedule and our obscenely early predictions for every game.