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    • Texas Tech Football hopes to unlock pass rush with stunts up front
    Alabama

    Texas Tech Football hopes to unlock pass rush with stunts up front

    Idris Bevan Posted on

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    The Texas Tech football team would immediately take back Jaylon Hutchings and Tony Bradford.

    The Red Raiders knew what to expect from the reliable pair of defensive tackles who combined for 95 college starts.

    Still, Tech coach Joey McGuire needs to see more pressure from the defensive front up the middle than the Red Raiders faced last season. That was one of McGuire’s many takeaways from the coaching staff’s rigorous self-evaluation in February, when they rewatched every game starting in 2023.

    “When we rushed four-man,” McGuire said in an interview with the Avalanche Journal, “we may have put pressure on them in the quarterback’s pocket, but we weren’t hitting them. The pocket was almost a U with no pressure in the middle. So (the conclusion was), ‘We need to change the way we rush in the middle.'”

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    Texas Tech Football plans to challenge pass protection with more loops and twists

    One of the solutions: Do more spins, stunts and loops with the defensive line. The Red Raiders used those tactics more often in 2022, McGuire and defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter’s first year on Texas Tech’s staff, than last season.

    Upon closer inspection, it turned out that it produced some results than they did last season.

    “When we started playing more games with our (front) four,” McGuire said, “we either hit the quarterback or put more pressure on him — other than a couple of games where we played bad (offensive) tackles. And so we really worked on how we’re going to impact the pocket in the spring. I think we’ve really had an advantage.”

    Bradford led the Red Raiders with four sacks last season. Hutchings and end Myles Coles were next with 3½ each. All three have completed their eligibility.

    McGuire said the Red Raiders not only need to be more strategic, but also generate pressure from their inside linebackers, as that position group produced only 1½ sacks. McGuire suggested, and inside linebacker Ben Roberts agreed, that Roberts and Jacob Rodriguez are better suited to drop into coverage and win the ball.

    Related: The question Texas Tech football team asked about Ben Roberts and Jacob Rodriguez

    During spring training, at least one of the returning defensive tackles noticed the increased use of turns and stunts.

    “We’ve been doing that a lot more,” Quincy Ledet said in late July. “We’re really just trying to improve our timing. Since the spring, we feel like we really know each other well.”

    “We had a problem with level rushing during the season last year. So the twist plays and things like that will help us get closer to the quarterback and keep us on our proper rush paths.”

    Tim DeRuyter believes Texas Tech’s football team could be more athletic up front

    A big theme of the Tech staff’s offseason self-study was to better identify and maximize the Red Raiders’ strengths as a team and as individual players and avoid making decisions that don’t sit well with them.

    “I don’t think we mixed up the pass rush enough last year,” McGuire said. “Or we didn’t realize that we were most effective when we mixed it up. So that’s something we’re good at. We need to do that more often.”

    DeRuyter did not object.

    “Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees when you’re preparing for games,” he said Thursday. “You try to figure out what the reasons were that we didn’t defend as well as we should have.”

    “I should have noticed it sooner, but we didn’t control the ball as well as we should have last year. We were without the ball a little too often. Depending on a particular decision, when you move, you need a little bit of space to get there, but too often when we tried to release the ball and get forward, we were still without the ball too often.”

    Related: Jayden Cofield and James Hansen play a role in Texas Tech football’s defensive tackle puzzle

    DeRuyter is optimistic that the Red Raiders can have a greater impact on opposing passers this season for another reason: Although Tech’s defensive tackles are less experienced, they find that some of them look more athletic.

    He highlighted Ledet, Jayden Cofield, Dooda Banks, Braylon Rigsby and De’Braylon Carroll, who transferred from Rice, as defensive tackles who have shown the ability to apply pressure up the middle.

    “We have guys that are a little more agile than they used to be,” DeRuyter said. “We’re getting them to rush the ball and apply pressure up the middle instead of flying past the quarterback. And putting all that together and putting a quarterback in a situation where he has to feel the pressure in the pocket and make a throw is something we’ve been practicing and I think we’re getting better at doing.”

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    Idris Bevan
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