I have no reason to defend Texas Tech, but I did get worked up over its description in the Knoxville News-Sentinel this week as a "gadget offense" that would never go over in the big, bad SEC, just because it's so incredibly retrograde.

Leach's offense at Tech is nothing of the sort, unless you still think of the forward pass as a "gadget": Watch the Raiders throw the ball, and they're not deceptive, they don't run motion all over the field, they don't run a lot of reverses, throwbacks or even play-action. It's just a fundamentally sound passing game that's exceptional in its timing and precision, and unless Oklahoma is able to disrupt it at the root -- that is, by pressuring Graham Harrell -- the Sooners will go the way of Texas and Oklahoma State (and, you know, the Sooners, since it was last year's upset over OU in Lubbock that kicked off Tech's ongoing, 12-game win streak).

Let's talk gameplan. It's hard to deal with Tech's scheme with coverages. You might hear talking heads occasionally say something like, "They [Texas Tech] don't care what the defense is doing. They do what they do." Here's a good example from last year's game against Oklahoma and the Raiders' last game against Oklahoma State, when the same play resulted in big gains against completely different defenses.

Oklahoma State played man defense most of the game, with truly awful results. One of said results was on this play in the second quarter, when Tech came out in a trips formation and crossed the secondary up with the kind of post-flag combo route that you might run regularly (I know I do) on NCAA Football:

The result is Michael Crabtree one-on-one in the middle of the field, and a completion inside the five-yard-line:

Tech scored easily on a draw to Shannon Woods on the next play. Obviously, you don't want Michael Crabtree running one-on-one with anybody -- but that's better than leaving him running all alone between a safety and linebacker, as Oklahoma did on a key play in the first half of last year's loss in Lubbock (this video, as poor as it is, is titled "Tech vs OU Momentum Shift"), when the Raiders hit the exact same route for a big gain against the Sooners' zone:

The key in both cases is Graham Harrell getting the ball out quickly, on time, to just the right spot, and Crabtree being big and physical enough to get off the line and get that spot. They're so consistent and precise with the pitch-and-catch elements, the coverage is always at a disadvantage. The defense has to try to disrupt Harrell's timing and accuracy with the pass rush.

Let's go to the game tape.
The problem is that, uh, there isn't any game tape of a defense disrupting Harrell with the pass rush. Tech's given up four sacks all year in 500 pass attempts; Texas got to him twice, and Oklahoma State didn't come close.

Earlier in the year, contributor Tyler Sellhorn broke down Oklahoma State's pressure on Missouri, whose attack is similar to Texas Tech's in a lot of ways: four and five-wide, big splits by the linemen, extremely smart, accurate quarterback. The Cowboys exploited the Tigers' big line splits and got to Chase Daniel by twisting their linemen on a regular basis, totally fouling up Missouri's man blocking scheme, keeping Daniel in the pocket and forcing him into more mistakes than he'd made the entire first month of the season:

Though the formations and lines may be the same, the difference in Chase Daniel and Graham Harrell is that Daniel is more dangerous on the run, and much of Missouri's offense relies on getting him outside of the pocket; the Cowboys' twists were designed to trap Daniel into moving into pressure. Harrell doesn't move unless the play has broken down; he wants to stay in the pocket, and twists will take too long to get home.

Oklahoma prefers to just beat the offensive line one-on-one with superior athletes, but Tech's line has shown no weakness on that front. More likely -- unless he's willing to leave his secondary in man coverage and pray for the best -- Sooner defensive coordinator Brent Venables is going to have to get creative, which is hardly foreign to him: Here's how he baited then-sophomore Harrell into a sack with a textbook zone blitz the last time the Raiders were in Norman, in 2006.

Oklahoma's only in a three-man front, but with linebackers creeping up before the snap, one of Harrell's "hot" reads in case of blitz is the quick slant into the middle of the field. Instead, Venables drops the trips-side defensive end into that passing lane, leaving the Tech right tackle blocking air as the pressure comes from the backside corner:

It's only a four-man rush, but it's not the four men the quarterback or (especially) the protection expects. Harrell recognizes the end dropping into the passing lane and doesn't make the bad throw, but by holding onto the ball too long, and with his line shifting wholesale in the wrong direction, he's meat for Lendy Holmes off the corner:

The question is whether a) Senior Graham Harrell is going to be confused, or as slow to react to the blitz, as Sophomore Graham Harrell, and b) whether his line will leave him hanging out to dry. Neither has been the case so far this year, at any point, but as with Missouri in 2007, Oklahoma's defense has a way of breaking certain prolific offensive trends. In this case, with the Sooner offense, it only needs three or four stops, and maybe a turnover or two.