<\/p>\n
CINCINNATI, OHIO – OCTOBER 24: Will Hammond #15 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders is sacked by Patrick Bauer #10 of the Cincinnati Bearcats during the second half at Nippert Stadium on October 24, 2026 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Tanner Pearson\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Tanner Pearson\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
LUBBOCK\u00a0\u2014 No. 13 Texas Tech<\/a> was 59 seconds away from not scoring an offensive touchdown for the first time this season in its 37-24 loss<\/a> to Cincinnati on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from four field goals and the late-game touchdown, the Red Raiders\u2019 drives resulted in three punts, two lost fumbles, an interception and a missed field goal.\u00a0Will Hammond\u00a0\u2014 24-of-37 passing for 227 yards and an interception\u00a0\u2014 recorded his lowest quarterback rating of the season at 41.8 as Tech struggled to finish drives. Tech ranks in the bottom half at No. 73 nationally in team passing efficiency, averaging a score of 137.11 per game.<\/p>\n Head coach Joey McGuire, who acknowledged Saturday that he was as frustrated as he\u2019s been in 32 years of coaching after the loss to the Bearcats, said Monday the Red Raiders\u2019 coaching staff needs to simplify its offensive efforts. Those simplified efforts, McGuire said, start with assisting Hammond.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWe as coaches have to do a really good job of if we\u2019re putting too much on him then find a way to simplify it, and then he has to do a good job of responding with the stuff that we\u2019re asking him to do,\u201d McGuire said.\u00a0<\/p>\n A week before facing Cincinnati, McGuire said Hammond\u2019s first-half performance against Arizona State was the best half of football he\u2019s seen him play. The Austin native had posted his highest\u00a0QBR of the season (90.2) against the Sun Devils.<\/p>\n Going forward, McGuire said the coaching staff will lessen the amount of reads Hammond is expected to make during his natural progression in order to boost his effectiveness.<\/p>\n \u201cYou do start cutting full-field reads down to a lot of half-field reads, which is a lot of college football,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cOne thing that he does well is like our double slants and different things where he gets the ball out fast, he\u2019s done really well at that.\u201d<\/p>\n Hammond was sacked four times against the Bearcats, tying his season-high set against Oregon State. McGuire attributed three of those sacks to not releasing the ball quickly enough since there was no pressure around Hammond.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Offensive coordinator Mack\u00a0Leftwich said Monday that a majority of Hammond\u2019s drills during in-week practice are catered toward pocket presence. He feels Hammond has been successful against blitz\u2019s this season, especially against Arizona State.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMost of our drills really during practice are revolved around pocket movement and pocket feel,\u201d Leftwich said. \u201cJust because that\u2019s what a lot of the game ends up being at quarterback. There\u2019s very few times where you sit back there and you got a perfectly clean pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n As a whole, Leftwich described Hammond\u2019s season through seven games as a series of ups and downs.<\/p>\n \u201cI think his highs have been high and his lows have been low,\u201d Leftwich said. \u201cWe\u2019ve just been a little bit inconsistent at times, and that\u2019s something we\u2019ve talked about and are trying to work through, finding the right process and the right frame of mind that he needs to be in to go play well on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n LUBBOCK, TEXAS – OCTOBER 17: Thomas Castellanos #4 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders runs the ball during the second half of the game against the Arizona State Sun Devils at Galaxy Stadium on October 17, 2026 in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by John E. Moore III\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n John E. Moore III\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The Red Raiders\u2019 backup quarterback is Thomas Castellanos, who has primarily been used in red-zone situations this season. He didn\u2019t see the field once against Cincinnati. McGuire said he should have utilized\u00a0Castellanos while Tech\u2019s offense was struggling but felt the quarterback was still reacclimating to in-game scenarios after again regaining his eligiblility through a Kentucky court ruling.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Leftwich said that while hindsight is 20\/20, he agreed the Red Raiders\u2019 offensive unit should have come up with some packages for the Miami native.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDefinitely when you have struggles like that you sit back on Sunday and wish you probably had used him [a] little bit more or game plan for him,\u201d\u00a0Leftwich said. \u201cReally a lot of that had to do with him not being there for the two weeks with Colorado and Arizona State and the uncertainty there.\u201d<\/p>\n The Red Raiders will look to capture some offensive consistency at 11 a.m. Saturday against No. 22 Arizona at Galaxy Stadium in Lubbock.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CINCINNATI, OHIO – OCTOBER 24: Will Hammond #15 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders is sacked by Patrick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28,159667,144221,89414,88145],"class_list":["post-478413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-tech-quarterback-will-hammond","tag-tp-college-football","tag-tp-texas-tech-red-raiders","tag-tp-colleges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n