Texas Tech: What To Look for Against New Mexico

It's safe to say this weekend is a rather important one for the Texas Tech football team. They'll be facing off against New Mexico on Saturday night in a lopsided match up at Jones AT&T Stadium.

Tech will be looking to get back on track after suffering back to back losses against Texas and Houston on the road. The Raiders could use an easy win this weekend against an opponent that is struggling on both sides of the ball.

After suffering a heartbreaking loss last Saturday starting RG Brandon Carter was suspended for violating team rules and self proclaimed "Twittergate" hit Mike Leach's team.

New Mexico also comes in with there own problems. The Lobos are winless and are dealing with head coach's Mike Locksley’s rumored landed punch on assistant coach J.B. Gerald last week.

The Lobos shouldn't present much of a problem for Tech, but the Raiders need to work on improving from last Saturday's affair.

RB Harrison Jeffers needs to continue to get opportunities with the ball in his hands. Last week he was impressive in his first substantial playing time of the season.

Jeffers got a chance to run and catch out of the backfield and motion sets. He was able to pick up 70 all purpose yards on six touches against the Cougars defense and given more chances against the Lobos similar results should be obtained.

The offensive line also looked to get it going last week and it'll be interesting to see what changes are brought about with the staring line. Without Carter, the line still needs to reproduce their efforts against the Cougars and control the line for their RBs.

Leach needs to also learn a lesson from last week’s play calling and make better use of timeouts.

Tech decided against a field goal that would have extended the lead on Houston, on a fourth down play inside the Cougar five-yard line. Leach opted instead for the touchdown and putting Tech up by potential three scores on the powerful Cougar offense.

Tech failed on the fourth down play and walked away empty handed on that possession. Leach needs to show maturity and take sure points when offered to the Raiders.

Also, he wasted a timeout very early in the game on a failed challenge as well as on a failed offside attempt.

In the second quarter Tech faced a fourth and four from their own 38-yard line and the offense was kept on the field and QB Taylor Potts got up to the line of scrimmage acting as if he was going to run a play. Instead, Potts tried to draw the Cougar defense offsides by going with a long and high snap count.

It did not work and instead of just taking a delay of game penalty Tech proceeded to call a timeout just to punt the ball away. Not only did this put Tech in a hole for the rest of the half, the play call has only worked one time in the last four years and even that was pure luck.

Last year, during the Nebraska game, QB Graham Harrell ran the same play on a fourth down. When C Stephen Hamby thought he saw a Nebraska defender offsides, he hike the ball, but no flag was thrown. Luckily, the cornerback on the Husker defense forgot to cover WR Michael Crabtree and Tech was able to get the first down.

Leach has consistently run this exact play in fourth-down situations with a very low success rate. For being as smart as he is perceived to be, he can do a lot for his team by realizing when a play doesn’t work, abandoning it and save some timeouts.

The Raider offense needs to be able to trust their HC and be rewarded when they have opportunities to put points on the board and Leach needs to be more methodical with game management against New Mexico. This will go a long way when the Big XII regular season opens up next weekend against Kansas State.

The defense on the other hand doesn’t need any improvement. The line has consistently gotten pressure on all the QBs so far this season, the linebackers have done a good job of wrapping up and taking away YAC and the secondary has three interceptions on the year.

Tech’s defense should have no problem getting to Lobo QB Donovan Porterie and should be able to stop an already horrible offense. New Mexico only has 1,048 yards of total offense and only scored 46 points in four games this year.

Tech needs to cure what has been ailing this program the last week and there is no better medicine then a win. The Raiders should control this game from the onset and should have no trouble putting away the Lobos early.

This game needs to give confidence back to the Raiders who have been down all week after the last second loss to Houston. Hopefully this game will show that Tech is a damn good team who has only lost games to two top 15 teams on the road by less then a combined 12 points.

This game won’t fix all the problems, but a win Saturday and Kansas State coming up next week should put Tech back in position for a top tier bowl in late December.