Even people who pay close attention to Texas Tech football might give little thought to the team captains until a month from now when it’s time for the pre-game coin toss of the season opener.
To Behren Morton, Tahj Brooks, Caleb Rogers, Jacob Rodriguez and Bryce Ramirez, captain is more than a ceremonial title, though. They’ve been putting actions behind their status for months now.
Even before last season ended, way back in December, four of the team leaders approached Tech coach Joey McGuire, saying they wanted to review the roster, player by player, in face-to-face meetings before the 2024 season began. They’ve been at it for months now.
“We’re still doing it,” Rodriguez, the starting inside linebacker, said in mid-July. “We’re doing it constantly. Still going through the roster. I think we’ve gone through it three times now. … Just trying to glue the team together that way.”
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With the ongoing construction at Jones AT&T Stadium, Tech coaches worked from December into July out of the suite level of the west stadium building. That’s where Tech players met with the captains, Morton said, one or two at a time. The messages were customized to each player, be they all-conference caliber or third-stringers fighting to crack the two-deep.
“Us five, we sat down without the coaches and brought individual guys in,” Rodriguez said. “We thought that was a big thing. One, to tell them how proud of them we are or to tell them, ‘Hey, we see what you’re doing, but we want you to take on more of a role. Or we want you to try to do this. We think you’re an older guy who can make a really big impact. Why not bring the young guys along?’ “
Joey McGuire impressed by the initiative of Texas Tech football captains
McGuire said the team leaders hatched the idea themselves and approached him with it in December.
“Four of those five guys walked in my office two weeks before the bowl game,” McGuire said, “and said, ‘Coach, we want to talk about every single player on this roster. We want to talk about our teammates, tell you what we think of them and where we can help you.’ “
In his 30 years coaching, McGuire said, he’s not had a similar experience, one in which team captains initiate their own player evaluations and offer individual feedback to the roster. Perhaps frustration provided a spark. At the time the players approached McGuire, the Red Raiders were 6-6. Even if they did win the Independence Bowl, they fell short of last year’s expectations.
“It was kind of just like, ‘We can’t continue to do the same thing we’ve been doing,’ ” Rodriguez said. “We have to find something else we could do, and so I think going back to square one is kind of identifying who on the team needs to fit in what roles. And so meeting with players, going down the roster and talking about if we like this guy, if we don’t like this guy … I’m not talking about personally. I’m just talking about how they fit, what kind of roles they can improve on, where we want them to move to, or stay how they’re doing. We think they’re doing a great job.
“Stuff like that. How can we get better as a team? How can we jell better? How can we get guys who have similar backgrounds to mesh and bring guys along? Because everybody comes from a different walk of life.”
When the Red Raiders begin preseason practice on Wednesday, Behren Morton will be starting his fourth season in the program.
Asked if he’s seen any such approach on his previous teams, the Tech quarterback said, “No, no, no, not really.”
“It’s kind of always been, ‘What does coach McGuire want us to do?’ ” Morton said. “But now it’s, what do we need to do that we see? Because coach McGuire’s a busy man. He has things to do. We’re around the guys 24/7, so we understand how important it is that we need everyone on the team to understand what we’re trying to do accomplish.”
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Texas Tech football captains began giving teammates feedback months ago
It was late January, more than a month after the meeting in McGuire’s office, that Morton, Brooks, Rogers, Ramirez and Rodriguez were named captains.
That was a good time to put their plan into action. Counting early enrollees from high school and additions from the NCAA transfer portal, 29 newcomers joined the team in January.
“Once we got notice that we were the captains,” Morton said, “we just said, ‘We might as well take full opportunity of what we can do right now and go accomplish that. So this summer it’s been really big to try to (acclimate) the incoming freshmen to learning the brand. That’s the biggest thing: getting the new guys in the portal, the young freshmen and the guys who’ve been here just to really buy in, and I think we’ve done a great job this summer and really fired up to go into the season.”
Beyond themselves, Morton said, the captains decided that “we’re going to need some guys on the team we can really rely on.”
He cited Joseph Plunk as an example. A fifth-year senior, Plunk’s earned his keep as a regular on special teams. He’s been a fringe contributor on defense, bouncing between second and third team, but he’s someone McGuire’s long praised for his understanding of the game.
Now at Tech’s three safety positions, the Red Raiders have six freshmen and sophomores occupying nine spots in the three-deep. Plunk can have a sizable impact there, Morton said, even without playing a lot.
“Joe Plunk has been a great leader in that safety room,” Morton said. “He’s a vet in that room. He hasn’t gotten to play much snaps, but he understands how college football works, so he can teach the young freshmen that are really talented, ‘This is what it takes to be a legit Big 12 safety.’ People like that have taken full responsibility and done a great job.”
Being critical of their teammates wasn’t necessarily the point, Rodriguez said. He painted the sit-downs as being more about defining roles, motivating and pushing players who might lack confidence.
“It wasn’t always like, get in your face, ‘You need to be better,’ ” Rodriguez said. “It was kind of like, we need to show guys how much potential they really have, how much us five as a group feel about them. And so, once they know how much we care, they’re an extension of us. They’re an extension of coach McGuire.
“If we can get the whole team believing in that and truly knowing that, it will be even better. So we sat those guys down, had a great talk with a lot of them, just kind of asked for them to do a better role or just don’t wait. That was another thing we talked about: ‘Don’t just wait for your time. Go take it.’ You don’t have to wait, say, ‘Ah, I’m going to sit this year and play next year.’ Go do it now. Why not now?”
