After a strong win over Houston where the Texas Tech offense looked the best, it has all season and the Tech defense was able to turn the tide in the second half, we spoke with Zach Kittley and Tim DeRuyter ahead of this weekend’s matchup in Waco against Baylor.
Kittley was really pleased with his quarterback and the offense as a whole after a really clean game from his group.
“I think part of it is just mentally for him, knowing that, you know, as long as he is ready to go Saturday, health wise, he's going to be the guy,” Kittley said. “We talked all week about him going out there not trying to be the hero. I feel like he may have tried to be a little bit too much at times there in West Virginia. This this week, there were sometimes where maybe he almost didn't do enough, but that was okay.”
Kittley also mentioned the Red Raiders use of the screen game on Saturday, saying that Morton does well to get the ball to the boundary.
“Just a part of what we're doing here this week, again just trying to attack what the defense gives us,” Kittley said. “That is one of Behren’s, really good talents to spit that ball out there. So, it does play into his, you know, his skill set, but, again, it's not part of the game plan for the weekend. We executed at a pretty high level.”
The quarterback, Behren Morton, was helped out majorly by his offensive line, who gave him a clean pocket on 92-percent of his drop backs along with a big day in the run game from both Tahj Brooks and Cam’ron Valdez.
“Overall, the offensive line, in our mind, it’s the best game of the year,” Kittley said. “We knew we were going to be ready to run the football. The whole lineup played their best game of the year, again part of that because we were able to run the football, in terms of getting pressure off them in pass-pro.”
Kittley spoke about the installation of the tight-end motion out then in to block in the run game, which was something new.
“I don't know exactly how many targets or catches the tight ends had,” Kittley said. “We got to just put in some new stuff for those guys, some stuff schematically. We thought it would help open up some running lanes and we felt we did a really good job with that. The tight ends had a really nice game in the run game.”
On the other side of the football, Tim DeRuyter’s group had some struggles in the first half against Houston that was flipped in the second half.
“We didn't tackle the well the first half,” DeRuyter said. “We gave the younger guys some stuff that slowed them down mentally. We got to do more of our day one install stuff, basic stuff that every guy should know. They executed better and we got the guys doing a better job of putting pressure on the quarterback, kept him in the pocket for the most part. Better with their eyes and coverage.”
DeRuyter echoed confidence in his outside rusher group where the Red Raiders had struggled at times this season.
“It doesn’t show up in the statistics, but I thought Steve (Linton) had his best game being here. Really affected the quarterback, in the second half in particular. I think when people watch the tape, they're going to notice him,” DeRuyter said. “Myles is doing a really nice job for the most part in the run game. We still want him to strain this a little bit more to be able to make plays. They're probably never going to get to where we want them to be or where our expectation is for them. But we think they both can be really good players.”
As the attention shifts northwest of Houston to Waco, DeRuyter echoed that his secondary is going to have to have to step up after some bad moments last weekend.
“Yeah, it's the Big 12. You got challenges every single weekend and there's different flavors of the week,” DeRuyter said. “Very, very physical in their running game. They start out in a wide-zone and a lot of their play action comes off of that and they’re really sound with it.”
Baylor got Blake Shapen back last weekend against UCF, leading the Bears to a comeback win over the Knights.
Kittley also gave his assessment of the Bears, seeing some similarities between the Cougars and Baylor.
“They’re defensive line is their most experienced part of their defense,” Kittley said. “It's gonna be a big test for us again, you know, some very similar schematically with the four down front this week. A lot of similarities when it comes to the front, you know, coverage wise will be a little bit different than we saw but I definitely think the box is probably the strength of this team.”
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