Texas Tech offensive preview: Tyler Shough looks to pass all over his former team
One of the biggest talking points of college football’s first week was the Wyoming Cowboys’ upset of the Texas Tech Red Raiders. Texas Tech was heavily favored to beat the Cowboys, but as we saw, anything can happen early in the season as teams are still trying to find their identity.
Despite the loss, the Red Raiders’ quarterback Tyler Shough, who is a former Oregon Duck, played well. He threw for 338 yards, 3 TDs, with 1 INT. Shough is nearing the end of his college career and it is unfortunate that so far he hasn’t had ample opportunity to demonstrate his QB ability due to injuries. However, a small sample of games played does not mean Shough is not the real deal. In Texas Tech’s final game of the 2023 season against Ole Miss, Shough threw for 242 yards and a TD while rushing for 111 yards and 2 TDs.
That isn’t the end of the Red Raiders’ offense either. In 2023, Texas Tech returned a lot of their strong receiving corps from 2022. All five of their top WRs by yardage from 2022 are back for this season and presumably better than ever. Some big names from that group are Jerand Bradley and Xavier White, the team’s two leaders in yards and TDs from a year ago. White didn’t make much of an impact against Wyoming, and Bradley was held below a hundred yards despite catching eight passes, so look for both players to be motivated to make it up in week 2.
Lastly, let’s talk run game. The Red Raiders run game hasn’t been a strength of theirs, but it hasn’t been a weakness either. They didn’t rush the ball well against Wyoming with fewer than 100 team yards on the ground. Bottling up the run could be the key to stalling Texas Tech’s offense this season, but that is something the Ducks have struggled to do in recent history, so it will be interesting to see how that matchup shakes out on Saturday.
Overall, it’s important to know that Texas Tech should be a lot better this season than they were last week, especially offensively. Whether they’ll start to play better next week or later I don’t know, but Oregon fans should at the very least be prepared for a high-level offense.
