The Texas Tech opener brought a much calmer finish than last year’s wild 52-51 overtime escape against Abilene Christian, but it also brought back a problem the Red Raiders would rather have left behind.
Tech beat ACU 33-10 on Saturday night, and the scoreboard never got close to the chaos of the 2024 meeting. Still, the Red Raiders left with the same nagging concern that followed them through 2025: trouble turning red-zone trips into touchdowns.
Last season, Texas Tech converted just 55.5% of its red-zone chances into touchdowns, a rate that ranked 98th in the nation. In the opener, it was worse. Tech scored only two touchdowns on five trips inside the ACU 20.
The early signs looked promising enough. Quentin Joyner opened the scoring with a 14-yard touchdown run, and J'Koby Williams added a five-yard score to push the Red Raiders ahead 14-0. At that point, the game seemed headed for a comfortable blowout.
Instead, the offense stalled once it got close. Tech moved the ball all night and piled up 471 yards, but once the field shrank, the Red Raiders kept settling for less than they wanted.
There were reasons for the conservative approach. Joey McGuire and his staff kept the offense fairly basic, in part to protect quarterback Will Hammond, who was making his first start since tearing a ligament in his right knee late last October. It also made sense not to hand future opponents a full preview of what this offense can do.
Even so, a team with playmakers like Terrance Carter Jr., Coy Eakin, Micah Hudson, and a running back group expected to be among the best in the country has to finish better than that against an FCS opponent.
One game does not define a season, and this was also Hammond’s first start in a long recovery. But the carryover from 2025 is hard to ignore. If Texas Tech wants to handle the tougher games ahead over the next two weeks, it cannot keep turning scoring chances inside the 20 into empty possessions.
That kind of waste might not have burned the Red Raiders last year, when only one game was decided by single digits. But if they’re serious about chasing a national title, those close games are the ones that matter most - and those are the ones that demand touchdowns, not field goals.
In Other News...
Texas Tech Opens Season With An Early Defensive Problem
Texas Tech is already sorting through a defensive shuffle before the 2026 season even gets underway. The Red Raiders will be without starters Brenden Jordan and Trey White to begin the year, leaving the staff to patch together the back end of a unit that was supposed to come in with some built-in continuity.
Jordan will miss the first two games for non-injury reasons, while White is still working back from a knee injury suffered in fall camp. For the opener against Abilene Christian, Malik Esquerra and Ansel Nedore are set to step in, and the early test now becomes less about the matchup itself than about how quickly Texas Tech can settle those pieces in place. [Read more 🡒]
Texas Tech Still Has One Big 12 Grudge Fans Wont Forget
Cody Campbell is still carrying a memory Texas Tech fans have not let go of, and it is resurfacing in a new Paramount+ documentary, The Program. The Texas Tech Board of Regents chairman and former Red Raider football player revisits the Brendan Sorsby gambling controversy, arguing the school handled a messy legal and human situation with integrity even as the story drew plenty of public attention across the Big 12.
Campbell also makes clear there is lingering resentment over the way some conference rivals reacted, especially among coaches and athletic directors who criticized Texas Tech in public. The episode underscores how divided the opinion remained around the schools support of Sorsby, and why the episode still feels personal in Lubbock when the topic of conference politics comes up. [Read more 🡒]
Texas Tech's Opener Just Got More Interesting With Tommy Castellanos Cleared
Texas Techs season opener against Abilene Christian picked up a little more intrigue this week with Tommy Castellanos cleared to suit up after a court injunction held. The fifth-year senior transfer from Florida State is now eligible, giving the Red Raiders another option as they begin the year and adding a layer of depth to a game that already had the usual first-week uncertainty.
Castellanos is expected to ease in with limited snaps at first while he gets more comfortable in the offense and learns the playbook, so this is less about a sudden full-time arrival than a chance to see how quickly he can fit. Still, the NCAAs failed bid for emergency relief means Texas Tech can at least plan with him available, and that alone changes the feel of the opener for a team looking to sort out its pieces early. [Read more 🡒]