Deep in the weeds of Texas Tech’s 2024 spring football course, defensive backs coach Marcel Yates made a comment addressing what he believed to be his group’s biggest improvement: their physicality. Defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter echoed similar sentiments Tuesday during the Red Raiders’ local media day ahead of the opening of fall camp.

It is no slight to the guys who came before, like cornerbacks Malik Dunlap and Rayshad Williams, rather a testament to what the staff has and will continue to instill in the upcoming generations.

“I think, you know, it starts with a mentality and a standard that we hold our guys to,” DeRuyter said during his press conference Tuesday. “When we got here, and not to denigrate any coaches before, everybody does things a little bit differently. Sometimes guys have ingrained habits that are sometimes hard to break. The guys that are playing now are primarily guys that have just been in our system, and so you’re able to teach them from the ground up how we want to practice, how we want to live, how we want to play.”

While DeRuyter is mostly correct– the majority of occupants in the DB room are players who have solely been in the Red Raider program– perhaps the two most important pieces in that group did not begin their careers at Texas Tech. The common ground comes from a shared belief, or mentality like DeRuyter mentioned, that flows in the veins of Bralyn Lux and CJ Baskerville.

“It’s a mentality thing, it’s for sure a mentality thing,” Lux told RedRaiderSports.com. “All the DBs in our room, we got the mentality, we got that “dawg” mentality. We ain’t scared to go hit nobody, we ain’t fearful to go hit nobody. ‘Oh, I’m gonna go hit somebody and get hurt,’ no we don’t think that. We’re gonna just go hit you.

Baskerville, a safety who played two seasons at San Diego State, six hours down the road from Lux’s native Fresno State, shared similar ideas to the fifth-year corner.

“I think it’s like 95 percent mindset,” the Richland graduate said. “Whenever I got into college football, I wouldn’t say I was the most physical guy, but I think it’s really just a mindset. Whenever you want to get out on the field and you want to do damage to another person. It could matter sometimes how big you are, but not really, it’s just a mindset, because we all work out in the same weight room and we’re all doing more than enough weight. It’s really just a mindset at the end of the day.”

The physicality of the group is one thing, the way it looks and can present itself coming off the bus is an entirely separate conversation. The Red Raiders’ recent recruiting classes have featured several highly-regarded defensive backs, both in recruiting circles and, more specifically, on the track.

The makeup of the group resembles one full of former track stars whose speed translated well onto the high school gridirons.

Lux believes Macho Stevenson is the fastest DB in the room. Stevenson clocked in a 10.59 in the 100 meter dash in high school and won the state 400 meter as a junior in Louisiana. Baskerville holds the opinion that true freshmen Ashton Hampton or Peyton Morgan might already be the fastest in the group. The changing climate in the back end of the Red Raider defense has been drastic, symbolic of the recruiting staff’s vision and giving the coaching staff players with all the right physical tools to succeed.

“Obviously, I’m biased, I think it looks a lot longer,” DeRuyter said. “We’ve got better size. As teams have come in to watch us and they take notice. I’ve got friends who are in the business they’re like ‘You guys look different.’ People who came here in the spring, we’ve got another evolution of guys coming in, we just have a different looking team. It’s matching the vision of coach (Joey) McGuire where we want to go and certainly James Blanchard and his group have helped us elevate the standard of what we're looking for as far as athleticism and length. Not everybody does that.

Certainly that's one of our hallmarks, we're gonna try to take as athletic of a guy as we can, and make him into a great football player. And I'm excited to see what this group can do. Because you know what the potential is, you just haven't done it yet. Some of these guys have great potential, but we got to put them in a position where they could actually be productive players and I anticipate that they will.

I'm also looking forward to seeing it happen here in the next few weeks so that we can put them out there with confidence that they're going to do it against other people.”