The Texas Tech Red Raiders football team’s offseason was just given a ghastly temperature check

The Texas Tech Red Raiders were the belle of the ball right after the January portal window closed, but Cincinnati Bearcats transfer quarterback Brendan Sorsby’s ongoing gambling scandal leaves the program with a major hole at the most important position on the field.

CBS Sports’ Cody Nagel summed up Joey McGuire’s likely mindset this offseason amidst Texas Tech’s sudden anxiety: the Red Raiders most certainly wish there was another portal window to find a QB who could give the team experience beyond Tulsa Golden Hurricane transfer Kirk Francis, if Will Hammond doesn’t recover from his ACL injury from last October in time.

“This is the most obvious example of a team wishing a spring transfer portal window still existed. The Red Raiders thought they upgraded at quarterback with Cincinnati transfer Brendan Sorsby arriving as the No. 2 overall transfer of the cycle, but his 2026 availability is now in doubt amid an off-field betting investigation that has clouded his status. That leaves Texas Tech far less settled than expected,” Nagel wrote.

“Will Hammond, who saw action last season, is a quarterback the staff remains high on, but he is still working back from a torn ACL, and his Week 1 availability is uncertain. Tulsa transfer Kirk Francis is the only other quarterback on the roster with FBS experience. Under normal circumstances, that uncertainty would likely have prompted a spring portal search for insurance, but instead, Texas Tech is left to sort through internal options and injury recovery with no external fallback.”

Texas Tech’s RB room could win the Big 12. Is that TTU’s ceiling without Brendan Sorsby, though?

This is the second straight year Texas Tech has been hit by horrific injury luck before the regular season even begins. Last year, the Red Raiders lost USC Trojans running back transfer Quinten Joyner, who was projected to break out, to a knee injury in August.

Joyner, at full health, is a menace who owned a 7.6 yards-per-carry average during the 2024 season in the Big Ten. He’ll be joining Cameron Dickey, a 1,000-plus yard RB last season who scored 14 touchdowns, to form a dynamic 1-2 punch that should overwhelm most Big 12 defenses TTU will face. Featuring an elite tackle group of Howard Sampson and Jacob Ponton, with a strong center in Sheridan Wilson, the opportunity is there for a QB to step in and game-manage this team to enough victories to win the conference.

Is that the ceiling without Sorsby? Unfortunately, most feel that way right now. And with good reason.