The Lubbock Boys

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

[/i]Do you get the impression I like NE Statepaper?

 

NE Statepaper

 

The Lubbock Boys

Red Raiders preach passing, self-development

by Samuel McKewon

 

He's probably the biggest dude in West Texas, and right at top of the list biggest football players in the Big 12 Conference. And, judging by his on-field look - tats, piercings, face paint - right guard Brandon Carter has a future as an extra in the next Mel Gibson flick if he doesn't make it in the NFL.

 

In his profile picture, Carter sports a jacket, tie, and, well...

 

"Yes, sir," Carter answers in a polite drawl. "I have the mohawk."

 

The juxtaposition of manners and mayhem…yes, sir...this kid's gotta play for Texas Tech.

 

***

 

For several weeks now, it's been about as exciting as the third shift at the glue factory around Nebraska's football program, and that was before NU dropped consecutive games to Virginia Tech and Missouri.

 

The weight of history bears down on Memorial Stadium. You can feel it, as head coach Bo Pelini briskly walks from the practice field, sizes up the cameras, and fires off an honest, if brief, assessment of his team.

 

You hear stories of Pelini's lighter side, of his ability to bring players and coaches together, and, no doubt, he has it. But there's no time for it in the midst of what may be the toughest season of his coaching career. He's a serious man for serious times. His assistant coaches, friendly enough, inhabit the same mode. The easy smiles are gone. The Huskers are in the thick of it now, right back where they were last year, and while the heart is there, the execution is not.

 

At Texas Tech, there is no weight. Just history in the making.

 

The Red Raiders, 5-0 and ranked No. 7 nationally, look poised for their best season in history. Coach Mike Leach, after years of running that funky, diverse spread offense in Lubbock, is now a sage of the thrown football. Quarterback Graham Harrell just broke the school record for passing yards. Receiver Michael Crabtree is Wes Welker with speed.

 

And now Tech's launched a tongue-in-cheek, Heisman campaign for both of them, playing on the natural arguments quarterbacks and receivers have about who, exactly, wears the pants in the relationship.

 

"YouChoose2008," it's called. It beats a Chase Daniel Viewfinder.

 

"What happens if I don't grab the ball out the air?" Crabtree asks in his political ad. "An incompletion? The clock stops. Nobody wants that."

 

"NOBODY," intones an announcer.

 

In Harrell's ad, a different announcer retorts: "Football don't magically fly!"

 

"They don't," Harrell confirms with a smile. "It's science."

 

And a heavy dose of math - as in the nation's No. 1 passing offense and No. 2 total offense.

 

"I don’t know why there isn't 117 coaches here learning the system right now," Harrell said. "And every one of them running it right now."

 

Harrell is the on-field leader of these merry misfits, a slender, deft distributor of the football, maybe the best of Leach's students at Texas Tech. In the Red Raiders' 58-28 win over Kansas State, he passed Kliff Kingsbury on Tech's all-time passing yards list. Kingsbury, Harrell said, "was probably the first person to text me" with a congratulations.

 

The senior has thrown for 12,709 yards, and he is likely to end this season somewhere north of 15,000. Harrell's mechanics are a little awkward - too often, he drifts backward in the pocket to evade pressure, and his motion can be more of a sling than a polished throw - but he rarely makes the crucial error, and has only thrown three interceptions in 2008.

 

Chalk it up to Leach's Montessori approach to coaching quarterbacks; he provides the basics to them during their freshman year, then turns them loose to progress in their own way.

 

"He just teaches his quarterbacks basic skills and says 'that's enough,'" Harrell said. "Trust your reads, trust your play and trust the guys around you. He'll teach a freshman what you need to know and then you'll just get better and better every year…he doesn't overcomplicate things."

 

Still, Leach's guys have been labeled "system quarterbacks."

 

They rack up gaudy numbers in college and can't make NFL rosters afterward. Because Harrell rarely takes a snap from under center, and his iffy mechanics he'll get the same scrutiny.

 

"People want to say 'can it relate to the pros or go to the next level?'" Harrell said. "And you don't always have that success.

 

"...Hopefully one day I'll get a shot in the League and make it. Break the mold or something, break the little 'system quarterback' title for guys that come behind me."

 

Can Harrell take his line with him? A massive unit that Tech calls "The Secret Service" and touts as the nation's largest has held opponent to just one sack and helped give the Red Raiders a potent, complimentary running game that's averaging more yards than Nebraska's brand of power football.

 

The best of them might be Carter, a junior who was recruited by Nebraska and earned All-Big 12 honorable mention last year.

 

"If he's got you on his heels," Harrell said of Carter, "he'll go ahead and slam you and put you on your back."

 

The learning curve for offensive linemen, Carter said, is similar to that of quarterbacks. Leach preaches the basics in early years, then allows a guy to season and perfect his role. The result in 2008, most say, is the finest line Tech's ever had.

 

"The blocking schemes do sometimes seem difficult," Carter said, "but once you've been here three or four years…it's really second nature, what we do."

 

Leach made a concerted effort to expand the Red Raiders' offensive profile this year, beefing up the running game with more plays and extra practice time. Tech's backs average 5.6 yards per carry, while the receivers average 12.4 yards per reception.

 

"It really puts teams in a bind, because what are you going to try to take away?" Harrell said. "If you load the box, we're gonna throw it on you, if you empty the box we're gonna run it on you. It puts teams in a predicament and makes them try to do things they're not always comfortable doing. We just have to attack them where they're not."

[CENTEXHUSKER]

Maybe we can set up a nice buffet on the sidelines for the "secret service" so we can take down the commander......