Projections, Reality, and the Weight of Expectations

Ever since I finished watching highlights of all the defensive transfers, I’ve been trying to calm myself down. I think this is the most defensive talent a Texas Tech team has had since I started following them, somewhere around 2002–2004. And when you zoom out, this might be a top-five Tech roster overall in that entire window. It’s deep, versatile, and dangerous at basically every spot.

With all that buzzing in my head, I started to ask myself the question:
If this team is so talented, and the Big 12 is so winnable, what could possibly hold us back? I’ve also been rewatching the greatest TV show of all time, so there will be some Mad Men references connected to the answers.

1. Schedule

I really don’t like the way this schedule plays out. I would switch it with last year’s in a heartbeat.

Tough to see it playing out any other way besides our three biggest games being on the road. We have to go to Tempe to face the league favorite. Then it’s a trip to Manhattan, where it might literally be against the laws of nature for Tech to win. Oh, and we open in Salt Lake City against a team with something to prove, and a coach who always has his guys ready to hit you in the mouth (outside of last year I guess).

The stretch from October 18th – November 12th is absolutely brutal. Trips to Arizona State and Kansas State sandwich a rivalry game against the Pokes, and to finish it off we get to play BYU off a bye week.

I know everyone has gripes with the schedule and who knows what these teams look like when the bullets start flying, but based off what we know today, this ain’t going to be easy. In that case, let’s take Don Draper’s words to heart.

2. Projections and Reality

This idea that the hilarious Harry Crane shares here can be applied to Texas Tech’s 2025 season is a couple of ways. One, the transfers. The process looks sound—self-scouting, needs identification, targeted recruitment, resource allocation. I’ve watched the tape, read the stats, and listened to people who know. Player by player, these guys can play.

But what does that look like together, week after week, working toward a common goal?
Right now, it’s just hopes and dreams.

As is the second part of these projections, the coordinator changes. I originally went into this article, digging into the analytics to find similar struggles between Kittley and Leftwich’s offenses, I tried, there aren’t any. Leftwich’s scheme at Texas State does everything you want an offense to do. Drives are successful, efficient, and rarely stall. Same goes for DeRuyter and Wood, even with a bad Houston team, Wood’s team put together an incredibly respectful analytical profile. I wanted to write about the inconsistency of both units last season could carry over to this year and derail any potential run, but I can’t, in good faith, make that argument and support it with facts.

3. Doing Something That Has Never Been Done

I expect to get the most pushback on this reason, but I also think it might be the most powerful.

Busting through the invisible ceiling on this program is going to take a special and exceptional group. Based on circumstance, I think this group could be that, but there is no way of knowing that right now.

When I say circumstance some of that has to do with the new Big 12, but most of it comes through the work of the people who put together this roster. I’m not sure Texas Tech has ever been a bigger story in college football, outside of 2008. We are standing out, and if Don Draper is to be believed, that’s where success lives.

Bear with me for a moment, I closely follow a soccer team that is regularly the butt of jokes for not really winning anything since… 2008. Sure there have been plenty of good moments, but when it really got down to business, they just never had what it took to get over the hump. The more that happened, the louder the jokes got and the more of a self-fulfilling prophecy it became.

You could almost see it on the players’ faces during big matches, “of course we aren’t going to win this, that’s not what we do,” and the reality of the match would fall in line. Well, if my avatar is any indication, that changed this season. Some wild, borderline stupid decisions broke the pattern, and it worked. The history was rewritten. It is glorious.

There’s a reason teams like Kansas State and Oklahoma State just seem to figure out a way to win, while Tech has, in recent history, figured out ways to lose. Some things are bigger and more powerful than what happens between the lines, This Texas Tech team, put together in a way that absolutely stands out, is not only trying to defeat opposing teams on Saturdays, they are going to have to defeat decades of ghosts. They can do it, but it’s something to consider when making that bet.