West Virginia prepares for fast-paced Texas Tech offense

Texas Tech presents several challenges to an opposing defense.

The Red Raiders are one of the fastest teams in the nation, averaging a total of 87 plays per game, which would rank first nationally. The offense will press the pedal on their tempo and have had success doing it rolling up 484 yards and 34.3 points per contest in the process.

It puts defenses in a difficult position to be correctly lined up and understand the assignment each snap. It’s a chess game with the linebackers and safeties to get in the right spot because there simply isn’t a lot of time to communicate between snaps of the football.

Then if the offense has success, it puts stress on depth which forces the coaching staff to be both conscious and careful with how much they try to do and when they want to try to do it.

“You have to practice it and be aware of it and know it’s coming,” coordinator Jordan Lesley said.

The Red Raiders have already gone over 100 plays three times this season, which shows you the stresses that the unit can put on defenses that have trouble getting in the right spot. That means ensuring that everybody is on the same page and understanding the correct call.

It is essential to be ready at all times.

“You prepare for the tempo, that’s the hardest piece, so you prepare for that, and then try to get your guys in position in the run game and the pass game to keep the ball in front of you and get them down,” head coach Neal Brown said.

That trickles down to every portion of the defense and while there could be situations where there are ways to adjust during the game – most of it has to be planned out of base. Because of the tempo there aren’t many possibilities to substitute which creates even more stress on the defense.

“It’s very fast and there’s not a lot of time for thinking,” senior Dante Stills said. “You’ve got to get lined up and do your job.”

West Virginia has struggled with handling tempo at times in the past and the coaching staff plans to make some adjustments in what they are doing in terms of preparation.

That means changing some of the ways that they practice this week on top of altering the structure of the defense to prevent some of the movement from side to side to prevent some of the above-mentioned concerns.

“It’s something that’s affected us. You can’t continue to do the same things and expect different results so we’re going to definitely do some things differently,” Brown said.

As if that wasn’t challenging enough, the Red Raiders under the guidance of coordinator Zach Kittley also do some unique things on offense when it comes to showing a lot of new wrinkles each week depending on the opponent. That makes things difficult when it comes to getting ready schematically to square off against them on top of adjusting to the tempo.

“You have to adjust on the fly. Take what they give you, break it down and when you have the time in-between a series or maybe a time in the series depending on how that goes if there is a timeout when you have to have in your head a set of calls,” Lesley said.

The Red Raiders want to push the tempo and it’s going to be up to the West Virginia defense to respond and be in position to stop it.

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