Roundtable: What did we learn from Texas Tech's season-opening win?

Chris Level: I definitely didn't expect Pat Mahomes to be the team's leading rusher or even close to it. Mahomes registered 10 carries and, while I'm not sure that was all by design, it definitely made this sideline reporter nervous. Mahomes is more than capable of carrying the ball and being a big factor with his legs - as we saw Saturday - but I worry about the wear and tear it puts on him as the season rolls along.

I get it, Mahomes running it like he does protects Texas Tech's two redshirt freshman tackles but No. 5 needs to stay healthy. Him finishing any game, even against an FCS opponent, as the Red Raiders' leading rusher would seem to lessen those chances.

Aaron Dickens: I think that the biggest thing that we learned from Texas Tech's win on Saturday was that the everyone's cautious optimism about David Gibbs' defense was not misplaced. You have to be careful about drawing too many big picture conclusions from a win over a FCS team, but we have seen Red Raider defenses - including in Gibbs' debut last year - struggle with lesser opponents.

Last year, Texas Tech opened the season giving up 45 points and 317 rushing yards to Sam Houston State. That was a sign of things to come in 2015. Could this season's promising start indicate a return to defensive respectability in 2016? We'll see.

Will McKay: While I think we had a pretty good idea of what this year’s Texas Tech offense would look like going into the Stephen F. Austin game, we weren’t sure what we’d get from David Gibbs’ defense out of the gate. Well, I think we learned that this defensive line looks radically different with Ondre Pipkins at nose tackle and Kolin Hill at defensive end. Pipkins was extremely disruptive, to the point of arguably being the biggest reason the Red Raiders held the Lumberjacks to minus-6 rushing yards through the first half.

Pipkins is the real deal, and that’s extremely encouraging.

Matt Clare: I'm not sure what we learned this week. It was a Stephen F. Austin. Now comes the real test against Arizona State this weekend.

On defense, the expectations were high for newcomers Ondre Pipkins and Kolin Hill on the defensive line. Let’s wait another week before praising them too much, but both players lived up to the billing and really helped to set the tone for a defense that only gave up 17 points.

On offense, redshirt freshman offensive tackles Terrence Steele and Madison Akamnonu have to improve against a much better Sun Devil defensive line.

Drew Kohnle: One big thing I didn't expect was how good the Red Raiders' defensive line was going to actually be. In camp, you could make the case for the added depth up front. You could talk about the play of Ondre Pipkins and Kolin Hill. Ultimately, though, you weren’t really sure what the Red Raiders had.

Saturday, the defensive line checked all the boxes and then some. Sure, it was against a much lesser team, but the defensive line has been embarrassed before by lesser opponents and that wasn’t the case this weekend. Texas Tech's defensive line looked like a legit Power Five position group with plenty of options. That is a huge positive going forward.