The Red Raiders opened fall camp this morning, where we jotted down some observations from the open session at the beginning of practice.
Texas Tech’s head coach Joey McGuire spoke to the media about his team’s first day of practice at the training facility, seeming pleased with the Red Raiders defensive effort, including newcomer Brayln Lux.
“Really, really happy with effort. When you have a team like this and have so many guys coming back, you know, you expect a lot of retention,” McGuire said. “It was really good to see some of the new guys. Brayln Lux is he's, he's special. I'm going to tell you he had a great practice really proud of him.”
McGuire elaborated on how we may see Lux in the early stages of the season, after he competes for a starting corner job with returners Malik Dunlap and Rayshad Williams.
“He's going to compete for a starting role, you know, at the corner spot,” McGuire said. “The great thing about him, we tried a little bit last year, but we just didn't have the depth and experience, when we move to our DIME package where we're moving CJ Baskerville inside to linebacker now Lux can go to that nickel and now, we have really six DBs.”
Last year’s starter and someone who will be in that battle in Williams returned to practice today after missing most of spring camp earlier in the year, something McGuire was happy about getting back on the field.
“He looked good, got all the reps that we needed him to get,” McGuire said. “We go to a team period, a blitz period, we break for a special team period before another team period, and he took every rep with the ones on each one of those.”
Another phase of the defense that McGuire was happy with was his inside linebacker room and he spoke about his confidence in the depth in that room but was wary of the Red Raiders experience in that room after loosing Krishon Merriweather and Kosi Eldridge from last season’s team.
“Depth wise, I feel great. It's more of the experience,” McGuire said. “As far as the overall room talent wise, I think is as talented as we have ever been at Texas Tech. Now it's just Book (ILBs coach Josh Bookbinder) getting the guys to get the reps.”
As the press conference was winding down, McGuire spoke about his incoming class of 2024 that is currently ranked 30th by the Rivals database.
“Freaky, man, I feel great, you know, I feel really good about where we're at,” McGuire said. “It'll be, when you look at that class, smaller than my first two classes just because of our numbers. That can always change because who knows what's going to happen with the world that we live in and everything. 19-20 is probably where we'll end up, scholarship wise.”
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