Mack Leftwich, Texas Tech offense gearing up for season

After leading one of the countries top offenses at Texas State the last two seasons, Texas Tech brought in Mack Leftwich to be their new offensive coordinator to replace the departed Zach Kittley. With many new highly-regarded roster pieces and two new coordinators, there’s a lot of reasons to be excited if you’re a Red Raider fan.

Leftwich’s offense, built around a power run game and downfield vertical shots, is one of those reasons though so far through fall camp the Texas Tech defensive line has presented his unit some unique challenges.

“They’ve done a good job. As we go throughout fall camp, you kinda learn a little bit more about the defensive scheme and where you need to attack. We have some ways where we can get the ball on the perimeter and attack maybe more favorable matchups than banging our head up against the wall trying to run right down the A gap against those guys. They’ve done a great job and I think that’s kind of the great thing about this fall camp is we’ve really had an iron-sharpens-iron type of situation so it’s been a good back and forth. Those guys are making us better and I would hope they would say the same thing about going up against our offense every day.”

Leftwich plans to be aggressive

Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire wants his teams to be aggressive, and that has certainly shown up on the stat sheet.

Since arriving in Lubbock, Texas Tech’s offense has consistently been amongst the leaders nationally in 4th down attempts, which Leftwich is more than comfortable with.

“Yeah, actually my previous two bosses, we used the same analytics company. So I’ve had similar 4th down approaches, being aggressive, so that’s something I’m used to. It’s been nice, in the scrimmage last weekend on Saturday me and Sean Kenney will handle kinda the communication between what the book says to coach McGuire and then coach McGuire to myself. We kinda worked through the communication process in the scrimmage and it flowed pretty smoothly. So that was good to get a trial run before gameday.”

Don’t expect too many “tricks” at Texas Tech

Leftwich has been one of the most successful offensive coordinators in the country the last couple seasons, which has allowed him to go from the FCS level to the Group of 5 to landing his most recent position at Texas Tech.

He’s gotten here by running his stuff, so don’t expect too many gadget plays from the Red Raider offense this fall.

“No, I haven’t been a big trick play guy. I usually kinda lean on execution and running the plays that we’re good at. Every once in a while we’ll break one out, but trick plays have not been my forte in my couple years calling plays.

We’ve got a base set of four-to-five trick plays, we’ll practice them in our group install and try to get a rep against a defense so that we can get it on film and get a live look at it and be able to coach off of that. It’s not something that we just spend a lot of time in and a lot of effort coaching it and all of those kinda things, but it will be a part of the offense and you’ll see those every once in a while. But that’s probably not what we’re gonna hang our hat on.”

Finally healthy, Leftwich excited about Tech’s wideouts

Texas Tech added a lot of juice on the offensive side of the ball via the transfer portal, which includes wide receiver. Returns such as Caleb Douglas and Coy Eakin will be counted on for sure, but so will incoming veterans in Reggie Virgil, Roy Alexander and the younger guys coming up through the system.

Now that they’re all back and practicing, Leftwich is excited by what he sees from the group.

“That’s been one of the biggest differences for sure through this fall camp from even the way we finished out spring, is just the depth at that position. The guys who we’re counting on, they’ve kinda proven themselves to be those guys. I’ve been really encouraged by that and even a guy like Reggie Virgil, who was in a yellow jersey, kinda limited for those first five-or-six practices, since he’s came back he’s been as good if not better than advertised. I think he’s put himself in a really good position.

Guys like Kelby (Valsin) in the slot, T.J. West is coming on, Leyton Stone is coming on. That freshman receiving class are full of guys that are really talented, that can make plays. I feel really good about where the depth is at in that room. Roy Alexander, another guy who’s transferred in this summer and picked up the offense well and is able to go out there and make plays for us.

I think that was something that was a little bit concerning maybe by the end of spring, with the injuries that we went through and the position that we were at, but I feel like those guys have really stepped up and had good fall camps. So I’m excited about that group and think coach Juice (Johnson) has done a good job developing those guys and some of those guys have taken the next step that they’ve needed to.”

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