Why Matt Wells failed as head coach at Lubbock

September 14, 2019; Tucson, AZ, USA; Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Matt Wells watches before the match against the Arizona Wildcats at Arizona Stadium. Mandatory credit: Casey Sapio-USA TODAY Sports

The end of Matt Wells era Texas Tech football arrived quite surprisingly on Monday. It was no surprise that Wells was released, but the timing of the announcement, the first day of the game week and said goodbye next week, remained ignorant to many.

To say that Wells ’experiment was a disaster may be a bit of a stretch, but the figures show he will become one of the worst head coaches in the program’s history. In fact, his 0.433 win percentage is the third worst of the men who have ever led the Red Raiders. In addition, it is the second worst among coaches who have worked at Lubbock for more than one season.

Only Jerry Moore, who coached the Red Raiders in 1981-85, had a worse winning rate over several seasons of 0.309. And so it’s natural to compare Wells to Moore, because there are some similarities between the two former Red Raider coaches.

Both came as Tech’s head coaches in the lower-level program. Moore was head coach for two seasons in North Texas, while Wells of course came to town for six years in Utah State.

And what’s interesting is that when every man hired Texas Tech, neither had a superior head coach record. Moore was 11-11 in the UNT, while Wells was only 44-34 in the USU and had lost three losses in his previous four campaigns.

There were similarities outside the field and in any case, both men were highly valued for their character and way of treating people. However, that’s not enough to keep your job as a high-profile head coach at a big conference.

Now Texas Tech fans are left wondering what went wrong during Wells ’tenure. So let’s look at five reasons why Wells failed to succeed in West Texas.

He just isn’t that good a coach

We have to be brutally honest when judging Matt Wells. He simply isn’t that good a coach.

Coaches must be elite in some area of ​​the game. They have to be tactical geniuses on the other side of the ball like Mike Leach was in the attack, they have to be great recruiters or they have to be excellent to lead and motivate people. In which of these classes would you say Wells is particularly adept? Exactly.

The fact is, Wells is a worse than average university head coach. His career record is only 57-51. And taking away the first two years of his time in the state of Utah, two years when it was fair to assume that his success was due to his predecessor Gary Andersen, who is considered the man who turned. One of the worst football programs in the country, Wells is only 38-42 and only one winning season in 2015-2020.

In addition, Wells has proven incapable of getting his team ready to play evenly. Time and time again, his team came out of the locker room steady and unmotivated. That was the case three times this year (against Houston, Texas and TCU) and six times during his short Lubbock time, his team fell into a hole in the first quarter that was 14 points or more. That’s 20% of the games he coached on the Texas Tech football program.

Simply put, Wells is not a great head coach. He has only played one series of consecutive winning seasons in his career, and he has never shown the ability to build a winner from the program. Texas Tech doesn’t need that kind of coach because life in the Big 12 is scary for a school like Texas Tech that doesn’t make a living with the top 25 recruitment courses each year. I dare say Texas Tech needed an “elite” coach to replace Kliff Kingsbury, but instead we got Matt Wells, who is a weaker-than-average head coach and didn’t have the need to win at the big boy level. football.