This is the Depth Dossier: the Texas Tech Red Raiders, Week 9.

Texas Tech barely needed to throw the ball in a 34 to 26 win over Arizona, because the running game put up nearly eight touchdowns worth of ground yardage while the defense held Arizona to almost nothing on the same side of the ball.

It was quarterback Thomas Castellanos' first start, and through the air it wasn't pretty. He completed just 11 of 24 passes for 144 yards. But he ran for 117 yards and a touchdown, and running back J'Koby Williams went off for 175 yards on just 14 carries, including a 64-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter that sealed it. Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita threw for 417 yards and his offense controlled the clock, but his defense simply couldn't tackle anyone in a Texas Tech uniform who was running the ball.

Let's start with the number that tells the whole story. Texas Tech ran for 328 yards. Arizona managed 12. That's not a statistical edge, that's two different games happening on the same field. Williams averaged better than 12 yards a carry, and with Castellanos' 117 yards, they became just the second quarterback-running back duo in program history to both clear 100 rushing yards in the same game, joining a pair from 1998.

Arizona actually won almost everything else. Fifita's 417 passing yards helped Arizona hold the ball for 33 minutes to Texas Tech's 26, and Texas Tech lost the turnover battle on a Castellanos fumble. By the normal math, Tech should have lost. The reason it didn't comes down to third and fourth down. Tech converted six of sixteen third downs and two of three fourth downs, bailing out a passing attack that otherwise struggled.

The way the game opened mattered too. Tech scored touchdowns on its first drive of both halves, a 13-play drive capped by a touchdown catch from wide receiver Terrance Carter Junior to start the game, then another scoring drive to open the third quarter. It's the first time all season Tech has started both halves that way.

Up front on defense, despite giving up all those passing yards, there were bright spots. Defensive lineman A.J. Holmes Junior got a sack for the third straight game, and linebacker John Curry had a career-high three tackles for loss, constantly blowing up Arizona's blocking.

There were no injuries to report this week, so all the roster movement is performance based, and linebacker saw the biggest shakeup. Curry, along with Ben Roberts and Austin Romaine, are now every-down linebackers. Trey White is up to about two-thirds of the snaps, and Adam Trick is up to around half. LaDamion Guyton's role is expanding too, while Charles Anderson Junior has dropped to a spot role. That's a real pecking-order change, built off Curry's big game against Fifita.

On the defensive line, the rotation actually tightened. Holmes is down to about two-thirds of the snaps despite his sack streak, and both Bryce Butler and Julien Laventure are down to roughly a third. Jojo Johnson has dropped to spot duty, while Mateen Ibirogba has climbed to around two-thirds of the snaps. It looks like the staff is managing workload even with the pass rush producing.

In the secondary, cornerback Malik Esquerra is down to about two-thirds of the snaps, Peyton Morgan is down to around a third, and Davin Martin is in a spot role now, all trimmed back after a defense that gave up 417 passing yards.

Nothing is official yet on whether Castellanos keeps the starting job, but 117 rushing yards in your first start is the kind of number that tends to keep a quarterback on the field no matter what the passing line looks like. Worth watching next week whether Williams' workload grows even more given how efficient he's been, and whether this new linebacker pecking order holds up once Big 12 play rolls on.

This was the depth dossier. For everything college football, be it depth charts, data or dossiers, head over to C F B Depth dot com. We will be back next week. This was an AI-generated podcast from content developed by real human beings passionate about college football.