DEFENSIVE EFFORT FRUSTRATES TECH COACH

Ruffin McNeill wasn’t in the kind of reflective mood necessary on Tuesday to catalog his worst days as a football coach. Running herd over the losing defense in Saturday’s 52-30 Texas Tech loss to Texas A&M is surely up there, but the Red Raiders’ defensive coordinator didn’t feel like putting it into context.

Instead, he said:

“I tell you what’s frustrating is when I feel like I let coach (Mike) Leach down. That’s frustrating to me. That’s the first person I don’t want to let down is coach Leach. I take full responsibility for one-third of this whole deal, and I didn’t uphold my one-third. The biggest thing is I let coach Leach down and the staff and the kids.’’

Saturday was McNeill’s 30th game as Tech defensive coordinator. A&M’s 321 rushing yards was the most the Red Raiders have allowed since they gave up 366 to Oklahoma State in 2007. The day after that OSU game, Lyle Setencich was let go as defensive coordinator and McNeill promoted.

The Aggies’ 559 yards total offense was the third-highest allowance under his watch, behind the 625-yard onslaught Oklahoma unleashed last November and the 579-yard night Houston launched in September.

What the Aggies did might have been more stunning than the others, because they had been slumping and the Raiders had been riding high on defense, ranking 24th in the nation against the run and eighth in sacks.

“We just have to learn from this game as a player and as a coach,’’ McNeill said. “Learn from history. We can’t do it over, but we can learn from it. I tell you what, today was one of the best Tuesday practices we’ve had, to be honest. We haven’t had any bad practices. We didn’t have bad practices last week, really. We had good practices every day, but it was a good practice today. So the kids have bounced back and so have we.’’

Linebacker Bront Bird said he and his defensive mates got away from everything that had made them successful this season, including a variety of fundamental breakdowns.

“We did everything you’re not supposed to do,’’ Bird said. “We didn’t have low pads. We didn’t use our hands well. We didn’t get off blocks. That hurt us. A&M played a wonderful game, and we didn’t rise to the challenge.’’

A&M running backs Cyrus Gray and Christine Michael ran 25 times for 131 yards and 22 times for 121 yards, respectively, and racked up six touchdowns rushing and receiving.

Since the beginning of last season, Tech had mostly shut off the tap on quarterbacks trying to run. Nevada’s Colin Kaepernick and Baylor’s Robert Griffin were the only ones in the previous 20 games to run for more than 30 yards on Tech, and they’re in offenses in which designed quarterback runs are a focal point.

But on Saturday, A&M quarterback Jerrod Johnson got in on the act, too, rushing 10 times for 71 yards.

“They were scrambles,’’ McNeill said. “He’s a (throw to the) first-read guy. If the read wasn’t there, he tucked it and (ran). By the time we came off to converge on him, he had gotten yardage. He had a couple of designed runs, but a lot of them were just scrambles.’’

Story courtesy of www.redraiders.com