MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Even in a gregarious 10-gallon hat, with a perfectly sculpted mustache that was plastered across the internet as part of a national award campaign, it’s still possible to say the quiet part out loud.
“I know we had a few drives start on our side of the 50 [yard line],” linebacker Jacob Rodriguez said in the immediate aftermath of a historic Texas Tech season Thursday afternoon. “It’s hard to play defense like that.”
His comment shouldn’t be interpreted as a postgame shot at an overwhelmed Red Raiders offense and, everything considered, his vaunted defense’s performance hardly resembled a unit that flinched at the challenges.
The truth of the matter, to borrow the All-American linebacker’s phrase, is that it’s hard compete in the College Football Playoff with only a defense like that.
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That’s all the Red Raiders (12-2) had Thursday, in a 23-0 loss to Oregon in the Orange Bowl at Hard Rock Stadium, when their defense proved that it was good enough to compete for a national championship and their offense resembled a group that didn’t belong.
“We had a lot of respect for Texas Tech’s defense,” Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said. “They don’t play the way they played this year and not be good.”
He didn’t say the same about Tech’s offense, but, given how the Red Raiders throttled opponents in the regular season, it could’ve conceivably fit. Their offense, which averaged 42.5 points per game in the regular season and totaled the second-most plays of 20 or more yards nationally, was at the very least an effective companion for a steely defense. They scored at least 23, points, which would’ve matched the Ducks (13-1), in every other game that they played this season.
Their defense never allowed more than that, and through three-plus quarters Thursday afternoon, was on track to keep that pattern. The Red Raiders — even though they totaled negative yardage in the first quarter and weren’t any particular closer to a touchdown at halftime — were within at least two scores of Oregon until the fourth quarter.
“We just felt like, in this moment, it was going to be about chipping away and eventually it was going to break,” Lanning said. “It kind of broke open with us creating some extra opportunities there with takeaways.”
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Nearly half of Oregon’s drive started in Tech territory and half of those were created by way of turnovers. Oregon scored its first touchdown after edge rusher Matayo Uiagalelei stuffed a Morton pass attempt, recovered it at Tech’s 6-yard line and set up a Jordan Davison scoring run one play later with 11:20 left in the third quarter. The Ducks scored their second touchdown with less than a minute left in the game after the Red Raiders turned the ball over on downs at their own 36-yard line. Two of their three field goals were kickstarted by turnovers.
The rest suggested that Tech’s defense — which, per Pro Football Focus, was the nation’s highest-graded unit this season — was as good of a unit as the advanced statistics said it was despite the lack of a high-level resume that other playoff competitors might’ve boasted.
The Red Raiders held a high-powered Ducks offense to just 1.4 yards per carry. Their star-studded defensive line had a clear advantage against Oregon’s good-to-great offensive line, totaling 10 tackles for loss, 2 sacks and 1 forced fumble and was largely responsible for the touchdown-less first half. They held an Oregon offense that averaged nearly 40 points per game in the regular season to just two first-half field goals. They stopped the Ducks on four different fourth-down attempts. Oregon quarterback Dante Moore, a projected first-round pick in this spring’s NFL draft, didn’t account for a touchdown for only the second time this season.
Tech head coach Joey McGuire was asked postgame how he’d respond if, this morning, he’d been told that Moore wouldn’t throw a touchdown pass.
“Yeah,” McGuire said. “If you would’ve woke up this morning and you would’ve told me it’d be 6-0 at halftime, then I would’ve taken that, too.”
The implied victory in that scenario, of course, is that the Red Raiders would’ve gone on to score a touchdown or two in the second half. Instead they went three-and-out on their first third quarter drive, fumbled the ball away on their second, turned it over on downs on their third and ended their fourth with an interception in the corner of the end zone.
Morton targeted wide receiver Coy Eakin on a fade route. The ball was lofted into the far left corner where Oregon cornerback Brandon Finney Jr. read the route perfectly and pulled down his second interception. The Ducks then marched halfway down the field, kicked a 43-yard field goal and took a 16-point lead with 7:53 left to play.
The defense could only do so much to compensate for that.
Even if it might’ve been good enough to.
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