When a Sawyer Robertson-led Baylor beat the Texas Tech football team 59-35 Saturday at Jones AT&T Stadium, it was the fifth time in the past nine games the Red Raiders had allowed more than 35 points and the third time in that span they’d allowed more than 50.
In passing defense, total defense and scoring defense, Tech ranks bottom 10 in the FBS this season.
Naturally, then, one of the hottest topics of water-cooler conversation post-Baylor is why a true freshman wide receiver isn’t playing enough. Late in Saturday’s game, a leaping Micah Hudson made a one-handed catch along the sideline fit for a highlight reel, prompting renewed calls for more Micah. Not that those calls have ever really died down, inasmuch as the highly-touted signee, though appearing in every game, has played fewer than a hundred snaps.
I’ve discussed the Mike Leach effect before. Post-Pirate era, Tech fans more or less accept bad defense as normal, are pleasantly surprised when it’s the other way around, and spend their time scrutinizing offense while assigning a much higher standard. Not all, but it’s not a small number.
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Short answer to why Hudson doesn’t play more is he’s behind Caleb Douglas, the transfer from Florida who’s been the team’s best big-play receiver the past two games, catching five passes for 116 yards in a win at Arizona and nine for 99 yards and three touchdowns against Baylor.
Hudson doesn’t play the same position as slot receiver Drae McCray, a Tech Twitter and message-board piñata after a rough day Saturday, and even if coaches were inclined to move Hudson to McCray’s spot, that wouldn’t open up more playing time. The starter there is Josh Kelly, whose 53 catches for 590 yards are team highs.
Douglas and Kelly are fixtures. One’s a sixth-year senior on pace for career highs in catches and yards. The other’s a junior, behaving like a sixth-year senior when no one on the outside’s watching. This happens with most good college players, and it’s apparently happening with Douglas now.
“He’s really trending,” Tech coach Joey McGuire said Monday. “He had two huge catches in the Arizona game. He played really well. I’m coming in this morning, and he and Behren (Morton) are in the weight room. Monday’s an optional lift. It’s up to them if they want to get it, and he’s in the weight room.
“I was talking to Lance (Barilow), our head strength coach. He goes, ‘Man, he’s got such a good routine. He’s one of the first guys in the building. He gets his lift in, and then Zane (Perry), our head equipment guy, is shooting balls off the Jugs (machine) to him, and he’s catching a hundred balls before he goes to class.’ He’s playing at a real high level.”
Kelly and Douglas, also January arrivals to the Texas Tech program, had a many-months head start on Hudson who, because of his off-season knee surgery, wasn’t cleared for full activity until just before August workouts. That’s a significant hurdle in development.
Nevertheless, the expectation he’d be Superman persisted. Granted, McGuire triggered some of that, giving Hudson jersey No. 1 and predicting he would — will — be better than four of his former wide receivers who wound up playing pro football.
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Even had McGuire tempered expectations, it might not have mattered. The tag of five-star recruit alone ensured all eyes would be on Hudson from the jump.
I’ve mentioned this before, but in the parts of preseason practice media get to see, Hudson dropped a disconcerting number of passes. I’ve not belabored that, because it came in a small viewing sample, and might not have been representative of his performance overall. But he dropped another one Saturday, two series before his spectacular catch.
Based on Hudson’s talent level and his having played in every game, I suspect coaches view his concentration lapses as freshman learning-curve stuff, not a long-term concern.
Offensive coordinator Zach Kittley noted Douglas’s emergence as the main development standing between Hudson and more playing time.
“Right now, he’s kind of battling within that same position,” Kittley said. “I’ve said it a lot: Those three main guys (Kelly, Douglas and Coy Eakin) are going to be our three main guys, and we’re going to have the packages and some of those things for Micah. He’s progressing how he should progress. He’s doing a good job, and we’re going to keep having some things for him here and there.
“Just keep practicing with him and getting him confident in what we’re doing, and I’ve seen the confidence rise. You can see the big-play ability with him, and hopefully we can still see some of that happen as we go.”
His playing time will come. Doing what it takes to earn it isn’t going to hurt him or the Red Raiders.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech football’s not rushing Micah Hudson, and that’s OK
