LUBBOCK — Texas Tech operates under a 24-hour rule after games. The team offers itself a day’s worth of time to celebrate an individual win, mourn an individual loss, debrief and review tape before it shifts focus forward to whichever opponent lies ahead.
That’s not a method inherently unique to the Red Raiders and it’s by no means an inherently misguided one either.
It’s just, like, can all of this be accounted for before Sunday night?
Can the momentous week that was — one that included a best-ever position in the College Football Playoff poll, a long-awaited visit from ESPN’s College GameDay crew and a definitive win that might’ve been the program’s most important victory in nearly two decades — be bottled and stashed before the 60 Minutes theme ticks?
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Can’t it breathe a bit?
Can’t it be a 48-hour rule?
Can’t it be pushed back until, say, Monday morning, like a swath of Texas Tech students are certainly set to do with class assignments after a weeklong party in Raiderville?
“Every single week is the biggest game of the year,” Texas Tech linebacker Jacob Rodriguez petitioned. “You have to take that approach to be a good team.”
The argument against the in-house policy stops there. The Red Raiders, by any and all accounts one can muster, are a good, if not great, team and have every right and obligation to consider the future more than the past.
They’ve got it by the reins.
The No. 8 Red Raiders certified themselves as the Big 12’s premier team and a legitimate playoff contender on a national stage with a 29-7 win vs. previously unbeaten No. 7 BYU in front of 60,229 early-arriving fans at Jones AT&T Stadium.
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Their fate is now no longer beholden to the twists that college football generates and can punch a ticket to the Big 12 championship game and, in turn, the playoff on their own accord. The Red Raiders (9-1, 6-1) are alone atop the league leaderboard for at least a week and can qualify for the conference title game at Arlington’s AT&T Stadium if they win their final two regular-season games.
They’re one of three teams — alongside BYU and Cincinnati — that each have just one conference loss. They hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over BYU, though, but wouldn’t need to use it if they win out. The Cougars (8-1, 5-1) and Bearcats face each other Nov. 22 in what could be a de facto play-in game for the conference championship. Texas Tech plays UCF and West Virginia, two teams with a combined three league wins, before the regular season ends.
“This is what we expected,” Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire said. “We expected to win this game. But we’ve got a game next week and we’ve got a game against West Virginia. This game right here means nothing other than we went 1-0 against a really good football team. We’ve got to have the 24-hour rule to get better.”
McGuire believes the Red Raiders “have another gear” despite the fact that they won their first top-10 matchup since they beat No. 8 Oklahoma State on Nov. 8, 2008 and hosted ESPN’s raucous pregame show for the first time since Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree teamed up to down top-ranked Texas a week before that.
The Red Raiders were imperfect on offense and settled for four field goals — five overall — in the red zone. Oft-hobbled quarterback Behren Morton held the ball too long at times, took four long first-half sacks and completed just 17 of his 32 passes for 219 yards and an interception. His one touchdown was a perfectly placed ball thrown to wide receiver Caleb Douglas in the corner of the endzone for a 9-yard score that gave the Red Raiders a 10-0 lead with 19 seconds left in the first quarter.
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They could’ve stopped there. Texas Tech’s defense, statistically the nation’s best according to Pro Football Focus metrics, contained freshman quarterback Bear Bachmeier and held the Cougars scoreless and out of the red zone until the fourth quarter. Their 8-play, 75-yard drive with 10:46 left to play in regulation was their only possession that spanned more than 50 yards.
The Cougars averaged 35.8 points per game in their first eight and hadn’t scored seven or fewer points in a game in over two seasons. Rodriguez — who finished with a team-high 14 tackles and drew Heisman Trophy-caliber praise from McGuire and teammates — intercepted Bachmeier in the third quarter and recovered a fumble forced by defensive lineman Lee Hunter in the fourth to ice it. The Red Raiders recorded just one sack and four tackles for loss but dealt Bachmeier relentless pressure, held the dual-threat quarterback to just 12 yards on 11 carries and limited the Cougars to just a single offensive play of 10-plus yards.
“There’s so many ways that we can play better,” Rodriguez said. “You saw on that touchdown drive that they had, they were just able to move the ball down the field at ease. We are a better team than we were last year, but we’re a different team than we were last year. There’s still a lot of things to clean up to take an even bigger step.”
That sounds an awful lot like the head coach that he’s now spent three seasons with. The Red Raiders introduced McGuire four years ago to the day of Saturday’s game. They’re 32-17 since. They’ve bathed in oil money and reeled seismic transfer classes because of it. They’ve dragged a national spotlight to West Texas and performed accordingly. They’ve positioned themselves to make a legitimate run at the postseason.
McGuire, asked if he could’ve imagined this four years ago, sought Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt out of the postgame press conference crowd.
“We expected this moment,” McGuire said, “didn’t we?”
They’re in the driver’s seat for it, too.
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