For the past two decades, the Texas Tech football program has been one of the most defensively inept programs of any in a Power 5 conference. There’s no simple answer as to why. After all, the Spike Dykes teams of the 1980-90s showed that defense can be played at a high level in Lubbock.
To begin with, we must allow for the fact that recruiting top defensive talent to Texas Tech has been far more difficult in the “Air Raid” era than recruiting elite offensive talent. When trying to find players to play in the spread offense, former head coach Mike Leach had an advantage in that his scheme allowed for him to get the most out of over-looked players such as Wes Welker, Carlos Francis, and Eric Morris.