Texas Tech is coming off an off week in the middle of its conference slate. The Red Raiders (3-5, 2-3 Big 12) now shift the focus to an unusual Thursday night matchup when they welcome the Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University.
Tech’s bye week could not have come at a better time. The Red Raiders were battered and bruised from the long grind of the season, with the bye week giving healthy players the opportunity to rest and injured ones to get back into the groove.
“With the bye week, I’m gonna say that was a much needed bye week,” receiver Myles Price said in a press conference Monday. “We got to get some players back, I got to get my legs back up under me. That’s definitely been a big thing. And the vibe around practice is just like, everybody control what you can control, do your job. That’s the biggest thing, I feel like if we all do our job we’ll come out victorious.”
The Horned Frogs are coming off their own bye week, which was likely just as needed from their perspective. TCU suffered a dismantling at the hands of Kansas State, 41-3, in its most recent matchup before the off week. The pressure is on for both teams as they look to reach bowl eligibility. With the amount of turmoil Price has seen this season and in years previous, it would be easy to give up now, but he and the Red Raiders remain pushing.
“Well, it could be easy, you know, kind of get discouraged and want to just BS these last few games away,” Price said. “But my thing is just, and like coach Juice (Johnson) tells us, be a man about it. Come in everyday and do your job. That’s all you gotta do. We can’t control what’s going on with other things and everybody else. All you can control is what you do. So I’m gonna go out there and practice hard everyday and I expect the same from everybody else.”
The personnel of TCU looks vastly different in comparison to their national runner-up team from a season ago. All the notable names on offense like Max Duggan, Kendre Miller, Quentin Johnston have been replaced. Under first-year offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, Emani Bailey has been the featured running back as the Horned Frogs are still without starting quarterback Chandler Morris. If Tech wants to come away with its fourth victory of the year, it will have to start up front.
“Yeah I think the main thing is stopping the run,” defensive tackle Jaylon Hutchings said Monday. “They like to run the inside zone, and they like to run the counter. And then off of that, they like to do RPO, so really just stopping the run is our main thing. Make ‘em one-dimensional passing the ball… We understand they’re a fast, tempo offense. But we go against a fast-paced offense everyday in practice, so that’s nothing new for us. I’ve been in this conference for a long time and the majority of the teams are tempo, so it’s nothing new for us.”
Hutchings is the lone remaining player from the 2018 Tech team that last took down the Horned Frogs. The good-byes to Hutchings and several others who are in their final season of eligibility are soon to come with much more work to be done before they are sent off into the sunset. Like Price, Hutchings has seen it all, from the final season of Kliff Kingsbury’s tenure, the tumultuous era of Matt Wells and now the dawn of Joey McGuire. It has been a long road that, though ending soon, has brought with it a multitude of lessons to carry on forever.
“Just knowing how not to quit, battle through all the adversity,” Hutchings said. “I’ve been here for the downs, the ups, winning bowl games, doing stuff here that hasn’t been done in a long time. And no matter what the situation is to just keep fighting, and then something will come out of it… just finishing strong. Like I said, I’ve been around a long time, seen a lot of ups and downs. Trying to leave on the right note, and leave a legacy that I’m proud of for the last couple games and this season.”
