The unofficial start of the 2024 season has arrived, with Joey McGuire and the Texas Tech football team heading to Las Vegas for Big 12 Media Days.
With the sports world's attention now focused on college football, here's a quick rundown of the main things to know about the Red Raiders in 2024 and the Big 12 Conference as a whole.
Texas Tech football's 2024 schedule is very manageable
In head coach Joey McGuire's first two seasons, the Red Raiders were able to get on a roll in November and reach a bowl game, so if that's the case in 2024, that would be cause for concern.
Texas Tech's 2024 schedule includes four teams with winning records in 2023. The team's first five overall games and seven of its first eight games are against teams with losing records. It won't be until the final two weeks of the season that the Red Raiders play consecutive teams that won more games than they lost last season.
Tech's schedule ranks 111th in the country (out of 134 teams) in opponent winning percentage, according to calculations by Phil Steele of Preview magazine this year.
Tech's opponents have a combined record of 69-79 in 2023. Things won't look good if the Red Raiders aren't knocking on the door of bowl eligibility before their Oct. 5 trip to Arizona.
Beren Morton's shoulder, the overall health of the quarterbacks
Quarterback health has been a big issue for the Red Raiders in recent years, with Tech having to start three quarterbacks for three straight years, and the last quarterback to play every game in a season for the Red Raiders was Nick Simonek in 2017.
The hope is that Beren Morton can buck this trend, but he also has to be mindful of his own health issues. Morton hadn't played a single game as a starter before suffering a shoulder injury. The AC joint issues plagued him for the rest of the season, and McGuire decided to sit Morton out for the majority of spring training to preserve his shoulder.
McGuire and the team are taking this into consideration to add depth to their quarterback corps, and they are hoping Morton will be that guy. Will he last an entire season?
Taj Brooks and Micah Hudson are the top offensive weapons.
With their quarterback situation uncertain, the Red Raiders relied heavily on veteran running back Taj Brooks, who was the nation's leading rusher last season (290 carries, 1,538 yards, 10 touchdowns) before opting to return to Tech for one final season rather than take a chance in the NFL Draft.
This was welcome news as the Red Raiders needed to revamp their skill positions on offense, with much of last year's receiver production gone due to graduation and the transfer portal, but luckily McGuire's team knew they had a five-star receiver coming into the fold.
Micah Hudson surprised some by choosing to sign with Texas Tech over a group of strong teams that were interested in signing him. He was the centerpiece of one of the top freshman recruiting classes in the country and other veterans were recruited around him through the portal.
The Red Raiders added receivers Josh Kelley (Washington State) and Caleb Douglas (Florida State) and tight ends John-Carlos Miller (Elon University) and Jalynn Conyers (Arizona State University), who will pair with tight end Mason Tharp and returner Brooks to give Morton, or whoever plays quarterback, plenty of options all over the field.
The biggest question is on defense
On the offensive side, at least for now, it's pretty clear who will be shouldering the bulk of the load. On the defensive side, things aren't as clear.
Key players like Jaylon Hutchings and Tony Bradford in the middle and Dadrion Taylor Demerson in the secondary are gone, as are two highly-touted edge rushers who didn't perform as well as expected, with Steven Linton transferring to Baylor and Myles Cole leaving for the NFL.
The Red Raiders look to be strongest at inside linebacker, where Ben Roberts, Jacob Rodriguez and Bryce Ramirez all return with plenty of experience, and the secondary also returns key players in Bralynn Lux and CJ Baskerville.
Filling out the rest of the defensive rotation will be important for a team that has improved steadily under Maguire's tenure.
The Red Raiders want to be the new face of the Big 12.
Not a single team returning to the Big 12 Conference was willing to throw a farewell party for Southeastern Conference losers Texas and Oklahoma, in large part because, without the egotists around, there's plenty of room for new leaders to emerge.
Texas Tech is hoping to be one of the teams to clinch a spot in the Big 12. Oklahoma State, Utah and Arizona have all looked favored early this season, but teams like Iowa State and West Virginia should also be considered.
Then there's Colorado, where Deion Sanders is a standout player, or teams like UCF and Cincinnati, both of which are trying to reinvent themselves within the power conference structure.
It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds not only this year but over the next few years.
