The elephant in the room for the Red Raiders is the defense which ranked second to last in total defense. It gave up an astonishing 547.7 yard per game, and to add insult to injury, the team ranked behind Texas Tech in total defense was Kansas. It can be said a thousand times how important it will be for Texas Tech’s defense to improve upon last season’s outing, but that’s a generic suggestion. In order to understand how the defense should improve this year, it’s important to understand the players returning. This defense will be young, but it’s the handful of talented sophomores that are returning that will be an essential cog to the defensive machine.