BIG 12 CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYS

July 13, 2023

Joey McGuire

Texas Tech Red Raiders

Press Conference

JOEY McGUIRE: Thank you all very much. It's great to see everybody. It's an honor to be here and represent Texas Tech.

Kind of want to start off a little bit about the team and really off the field. When people always talk about culture and the health of a locker room or a team, you can always see when things are going well, it's what guys are doing off the field, starting to live the brand.

This last year has been incredible off the field. We had over 1,300 hours of community service. We set back-to-back records in GPA, team GPA, both semesters going over a 3.0. So really proud of the guys.

Excited about this year. We've got 18 starters coming back from the bowl game, and so have a lot of experience. They're working their tails off right now.

Brought five really, really good football players and great Red Raiders. I want to introduce them real quick. Tyler Shough, our starting quarterback; our starting running back Tajh Brooks; our starting wide receiver Jerand Bradley; and our two defensive tackles, Tony Bradford and Jaylon Hutchings.

Can't thank them enough for being here with me today. It's a great experience for them as student-athletes. It's a great experience for us at Texas Tech. We can't wait for camp to get started. It's going to be here pretty quick. Then starting to billed to get ready for Wyoming.

With that, once again, thank you all, and I will open it up for questions.

Q. I know you can't talk about specific recruits, but from a general standpoint on recruiting, how do you feel like that's going, and has your approach to recruiting changed at all since you were recruiting back at Baylor? Is it any different what you're selling out in Lubbock?

JOEY McGUIRE: You know, we feel really good. We signed the fastest class in the nation last year. That's not a feel-good statement. You can look it up in black and white. We're really excited about the class we brought in.

Then we feel good about the guys that are with us right now that we have committed. We're in a lot of battles, and that's constant until December when everybody signs.

I was lucky enough to work with two great coaches in Matt Rhule and Dave Aranda. They had such a good game plan for recruiting, and so I learned from two really good ones. We put our own spin on it, but we still are heavy high school recruiters.

The transfer portal for us is more of a gap, filling gaps. We only took six guys this year because we want to build recruiting at the high school level.

But again, I was lucky enough to be with those guys.

Since I brought one up, I got to text him yesterday, but it says a lot about Dave Aranda, number one, being here and representing the university yesterday after his dad passing away.

But definitely Texas Tech, our coaching staff, because we have so many people that worked for Coach Aranda, our thoughts and our prayers are with him and his family as they go through this difficult situation.

Q. We know how experienced your starters are in the secondary, but a few months ago your depth was mostly freshmen. Since then you've added Bralyn Lux and AJ McCarty. Could you talk about how big those additions are to your team?

JOEY McGUIRE: Really big, from the standpoint of you always want to -- I think same way in football, basketball, baseball, if you can play with an older team, guys that have played a lot of snaps, then you have the opportunity to be a good football team.

Adding those two guys in the secondary, there's some things that got to happen for them to be ready to go, but adding those guys, because we do, we have four of our five starters coming back. We were able to add CJ Baskerville who was a transfer, who started last year, and so that really is -- you've got five starters that have played a lot of snaps in college.

But you turn around, you add a couple more.

We're looking forward to some of our redshirt freshmen being able to play for us this year in that secondary, but it does help bringing vets in.

That's the good thing with the portal. You can kind of bridge that gap, and we were able to do that to where we were able to play some guys that are going to be ready to play and not force them in situations before they're ready to play.

Q. Talking about how we have 18 starters back next year, but specifically we have Tyler Shough back for another year, how pivotal is it that we specifically have this young man coming back for another season with the Red Raiders?

JOEY McGUIRE: You know, it's huge. It didn't dawn on me until Tyler said it during the off-season. This is going to be the first time in his collegiate career that he has the same offensive coordinator back-to-back years. The experience that he has, he is a pro. I mean, he is a guy that comes in and prepares at such a high level. He's such a great example to our football team to this is how you have to prepare to play at a high level.

It's really important for him to stay healthy, but again, and I've said this many a times, and some of you have heard me say this, I room our room. I could be wrong. Y'all could help me out if I am. But I think we're the only team in the conference that has two quarterbacks that have won Big 12 games. Not being high recruits, but have actually played and won Big 12 games.

So I feel like we have as good, if not the best quarterback room not only in the Big 12, but in the country, and I'm excited about both of those guys. Tyler is such a leader for this team, and he's going to have a great year for us.

Q. You lost a lot of production on the edge. How do you plan to replace that and how do you think Myles Cole factors into that?

JOEY McGUIRE: That's a great question. We lost a No. 1 draft pick in Tyree Wilson. Don't throw anything at me, but I think we're actually better in that room. I would take Tyree Wilson back right now; I'm not crazy. But whenever you talk about the depth, Myles Cole had a great last few games once we moved him from inside to outside. Played really well against Ole Miss.

He looks a lot as far as body-wise like Tyree, so we have really good length there. But Joseph Adedire that played a bunch of snaps; you have Isaac Smith that played a bunch of snaps; Bryce Ramirez will be back. Had such a terrible injury against North Carolina State.

Then we were able to add Steve Linton in the portal.

We're really excited about that room. Then I also think I have the best coach in the country coaching those guys in CJ Ah You. You just look at the production and how his guys develop and grow.

Then Tim DeRuyter, that's been a staple of his defense. You know, very productive edge guys. He's had back-to-back No. 1 draft picks in the last two NFL drafts.

And so I think we have a good group. We'll play a lot of guys there. We feel like we go three deep at both of those positions in all six guys we play.

Q. Highest 4th down attempts in FBS last year. Is that Texas Tech's identity or is that a product of game situation?

JOEY McGUIRE: I would say both. That's a great question, by the way, because I think we're seeing more and more the game has become more analytical whenever it comes to that and the numbers.

We meet every Thursday with Champion Analytics kind of to go over what we did right and maybe what we did wrong.

We also look throughout the nation at different games, at different situations to try to learn from. Learned that from Dave Aranda. They do that at Baylor.

If you watch and kind of see the trend, if you look at 2020 to 2021, the difference of coaches' philosophy, of being on that staff and seeing the success, really kind of changed our philosophy a little bit.

It goes to what we're doing at Texas Tech, what we believe in, and man, I have such a great offensive coordinator. I think he's one of the brightest coaches in America in Zach Kittley. The way he's been able to adapt so some of my philosophies in the way he calls the game, I see us doing the same thing.

We're an aggressive group as a whole anyway. Our defense believes in that. That's one thing you have to have. You have to have a defense that believes in that. Coach DeRuyter believes in it, our players believe in it, so we'll continue to do it.

Q. Just talk on the new competition, these four new teams entering the Big 12.

JOEY McGUIRE: Well, it's a tough conference. I heard Dana say it yesterday, being back in this conference, there's no easy week. I think every single team can beat every single team in this conference. It's not like that in most conferences.

Excited about the new members. Fired up to have Houston back where they belong. Should have happened many years ago.

Love what BYU does and the style of play. Known Coach Malzahn forever. He's a high school coach like me, and the success that he's had everywhere he's gone.

Then if you look at Cincinnati, there's another team that played in the Final Four just two years ago.

It's a tough conference. It's a more competitive conference in every single sport, and I think you're going to see some great games throughout the year and some great new venues.

Q. Considering how wide open this league has been the last two years and how wrong we've been in predicting the winner, do you see any reason why you guys can't win this league this year considering everything that's coming back?

JOEY McGUIRE: Well, I don't want to say y'all are wrong, but you know, it is. If you go back and look, K-State and TCU, I don't know where they were picked last year. I heard Sonny yesterday talk and maybe he said they were seventh, and they had such a great year.

The year before that you had Oklahoma State and Baylor. I think in 2020 Iowa State played in it and in 2019 Baylor played in it.

I do think it's a wide-open conference. I think for us, we have to stay healthy. I know this is going to be coach-speak, but we really do have to handle the expectation that maybe a lot of guys on our roster have not had before.

We've got to stay humble. But we've got a really good opportunity to be a really good football team.

I'll tell you our expectation is definitely to do that. We've just got to build on it every single week, and we've got a really tough schedule. It's going to be a really fun schedule. We've got some tough road games and we've got some really good football teams coming into Lubbock. I'm glad that we have the two teams that played in the Big 12 Championship last year at home. That's going to be a big advantage for us.

Q. After you beat Texas in overtime at your place, you said everything runs through Lubbock. Do you still stand by that, and do you feel like Tech may be in position to maybe be the flagship program of the Big 12 going forward?

JOEY McGUIRE: I love that question for so many reasons. For one reason because Pat Clancy is here and he is our storyteller for Texas Tech. I told him after that, I said some things are just for the locker room and some things are for everybody. He looked at me and he said, I'm sorry, Coach. And I said, you know what, Pat? There's nothing that comes out of my mouth that I don't truly 100 percent believe. So maybe that was for the locker room, but I still believe it.

I think that's such a powerful word, and whenever you have that in a locker room, you can do some incredible things.

So I think our players do believe that. I do think in 2024 there's an opportunity for some teams to take a huge step in this conference. It's going to start this year with what we do, but whenever you have an administration and an alumni base that is behind a university like they are at Texas Tech, you do have that opportunity.

We have a $219 million project going on right now. We'll have as good a facilities as anybody in the country. We have a very healthy locker room. We have a group of guys that believe in each other.

I feel like we're in a really good spot. I can't wait to get into Big 12 play. And kind of like last year, there's going to be a lot of really good games, and we're excited to be a part of them.

Q. Coach McGuire, the thing I'm impressed with the most is how much you care about the 806 athlete. I know you can recruit nationally, but talk about the strong athletes and being able to recruit locally.

JOEY McGUIRE: That was one of the things in my interview that we talked about. You can't -- you're going to not get everybody, but you cannot allow a Power Five football player that grew up knowing football as what Texas Tech does and wearing the red and black and allow them to go somewhere else.

So we feel like we did a great job with the guys we signed this last year. We signed a number of local football players from Lubbock but also in the west Texas area, Wichita Falls area. We recruit west Texas as its own state. Every one of my coaches has a west Texas area, and I think it's extremely important to make sure that those guys that grew up dreaming of playing in the red and black, that that's what they do.

We're going to continue to do that, and I think you're going to see some really good football players come out of that area. It's great for our fan base, and it's great for those guys to have the passion to play for Texas Tech.