Step into Texas Tech football weight room, new Womble Football Center
A weight room of about 15,000 square feet is one element of the Texas Tech football program’s new Dustin R. Womble Football Center.
Mack Leftwich, as Texas Tech football’s new offensive coordinator, is in charge of the players moving the ball. On a daily basis, that brings him in contact with the guys tasked with stopping it.
That’s made his job quite a chore some days.
Asked Monday who on the defense has given his offense the most trouble, Leftwich named several players from the Red Raiders‘ eagerly anticipated crop of portal transfers, among them edge rusher Romello Height (6-foot-3, 235 pounds) from Georgia Tech, cornerback Brice Pollock (6-foot, 195) from Mississippi State and former FCS all-America safety Cole Wisniewski (6-4, 220) from North Dakota State.
“I’ll be excited to see Romello Height rush somebody else’s quarterback instead of ours, for sure,” Leftwich said. “They’ve got some really good D-linemen. I think Brice Pollock’s another guy in the back end who I think has done a great job. Cole Wisniewski, I think he pretty much knows our playbook about as good as our offensive guys at this point. He’s really intelligent in the back end and almost the quarterback of the defense back there.
“So they’ve got some good players, and I’ll be excited to see them getting after somebody else’s offense a lot.”
New defensive coordinator Shiel Wood walked into an uncommon situation: a team that ranked No. 121 in the FBS in scoring defense, but with the financial means and willingness to address a lot of issues fast in the portal.
Of the 18 transfers from four-year schools Tech’s added since December, 10 play defense. All were starters or rotation players at their last stops. Blend that many experienced newcomers with eight returnees who started at least six games last season and it’s fostered ample competition.
“I’ve been fortunate to work with some really good groups defensively,” Wood said Monday, “but across the board I don’t know that I’ve worked with a group as talented as what we have here. From the first, second to third level of the defense … I think there’s a lot of positions where we’ve got depth to where guys can come in in different roles and different ways and impact the game on Saturday.”
He added, “We’re getting, in certain spots, to where I just don’t see much of a drop-off. That’s when it’s really fun, because those guys can cut loose and hopefully be able to do that for four quarters.”
Tech plays its spring game at 2 p.m. Saturday at Jones AT&T Stadium, the only session of spring ball open to the public. The Red Raiders had used 11 of their allotted 15 sessions of spring ball going into the week.
Asked who on his side had made the most progress since the start, Wood named a couple of the other portal acquisitions — cornerback Amier Boyd from Texas-El Paso and defensive tackle Skyler Gill-Howard from Northern Illinois — along with returning defensive edge starter Charles Esters and some young returnees in the secondary.
“I think Amier Boyd-Matthews has come in and done a great job learning what we’re doing and improving his technique,” Wood said. “(Cornerbacks) coach (Darcel) McBath’s done a great job developing him as a younger guy.
“Chuck Esters has done some really nice things for us from a consistency standpoint. Skyler Gill-Howard’s learning the system. Peyton Morgan at strong safety, Malik Esquerra at free safety, Miquel Dingle at star are some guys that have made some really good progress this spring.”
In addition to Gill-Howard and Height, Tech’s winter additions in the portal included defensive tackles Lee Hunter, who was second-team all-Big 12 last season with Central Florida, and A.J. Holmes, an every-game starter last year for Houston.
Then another opportunity presented itself shortly after March 25, the day Stanford fired coach Troy Taylor. With an NCAA rule that allows players a free 30-day look in the portal after a head-coaching change, edge rusher David Bailey left the Cardinal for the Red Raiders.
Bailey (6-3, 250) was credited with 31 tackles last season, a career low, but made seven sacks, eight quarterback hurries and five forced fumbles, all career highs.
Stanford didn’t start spring practice until the first week of April, and all players must go through an acclimation period at the beginning of spring and preseason workouts. Bailey joined Tech on April 8, so he’ll get little, if any, full contact.
The Red Raiders can get a feel for their latest addition regardless.
“I think everybody sees that he can add value to what we’re doing,” Wood said. “It’s an exciting time to get a guy like that in the fold in our program. … I think everybody’s excited about how he can help us continue to ramp up our development and our ability to impact things up front in a really positive way, and that’s been great to see.”
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