In Saturday’s sloppy 41-34 double overtime win
over the hapless Kansas Jayhawks, one aspect of that game stood out to many Red
Raider fans was the obvious inability to stop James Sims and the Jayhawks
ground attack.
Texas Tech head coach Tommy Tuberville and
the defensive staff knew going in that Kansas wouldn’t have much of a passing
threat, but somehow the Jayhawks managed to stay in the game by purely running
the football.
“You can't really give up that many running
yards, but we knew they couldn't throw it, and we put them up there and we kind
of gambled,” Tuberville said. “They broke a couple of them. They tried to play
all the runs and you break a line of scrimmage, and you're in there for a
pretty good sized run.”
When it was all said and done, Kansas had
accumulated 390 rushing yards and a mere 29 passing yards. Tech knew the
Jayhawks were going to ground and pound all afternoon, but the front seven just
could not seem to be able to stop it.
Following the game, senior defensive tackle
Kerry Hyder talked about the challenges in stopping
the Kansas running attack.
“They were creasing us, and the option game
we weren't picking up the pitch man, the quarterback was finding the seams when
they didn't pitch it,” he said. “That was the biggest part. They found some
natural gaps and were able to hit the gaps for big runs.”
However, even with all the problems Tech had
defending the run, it was the key stop in the second overtime period that
solidified the win and turned away a Jayhawk upset bid at Jones AT&T Stadium
in Lubbock.
“Yeah, they ran the same things,” Tuberville
said. “They went down and ran the option play. We changed it up. We decided to
take the end man on the line of scrimmage and make the quarterback keep it. But
our defensive end just get as much depth as we could.
No. 3 was in the back field, he was the guy running, and he was the pitch guy,
pretty easy to read. So we saw him go to the right side, and knew, hey, we're
going to stop him. We might not stop the quarterback, but we're going to stop
him and we had good backside pursuit.”
Tech will look to right the ship against the
leading rusher in the Big 12 Conference, Joseph Randle, when the Red Raiders
travel to Stillwater, Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon.