Long before Texas Tech offensive coordinator Mack Leftwich was leading the nation’s top scoring offense, he was calling plays for the Sanger Indians near his hometown of Denton.

One of his fondest memories took place in old Celina Stadium when Leftwich aligned the Indians in an unbalanced formation and ran student-body right and student-body left for an entire game. Sanger won in a blowout. 

His younger brother, Cutter, was the team’s starting center and best player. He remembers a time when an opposing coach refused to allow a running clock in the second half despite a huge lead by the Indians. He laughs as he remembers his older brother waiting until the final minute of the game to call a trick-play reverse that resulted in a touchdown. 

“Mack’s been scheming people up for a long time now,” Cutter said. “He had some real creative plays back then. I think he was a little before his time.” 

Leftwich isn’t the first older brother to call plays for his younger brother’s fifth-grade football team. But he might be the only eighth grader to do so. He grew up the oldest of three sons to a career offensive line coach, Spencer, who was at North Texas when Leftwich was born in 1994. 

Football was in his blood. On big recruiting weekends, the Mean Green would host a large dinner and allow family of the coaches to attend. Leftwich would dress up like a college coach, like his dad. He’d wear a collared shirt and pants and carry around one of his dad’s old briefcases. 

Leftwich tagged along to practice whenever he could and sat in on quarterback meetings led by assistant coach Ramon Flanigan. He was the only first grader in Denton who knew what Cover 2 defense was. He created his first playbook in elementary school. Leftwich’s mom, LaTonne, would buy him binders to create the playbooks, near replicas of how they were laid out by a college staff. They’d include a section for run plays, a section for passing concepts, a section for protections. 

The young Leftwich would watch Navy play and then create an entire flexbone playbook. He’d then watch Texas Tech and do one with the Air Raid. Most of his early innovations came in the run game as he modeled his playbooks after the I-Formation, under-center looks he saw each Saturday in Denton. He’d grow to love the passing game. 

“I’ve evolved a lot since then,” Leftwich jokes. 

Leftwich became a fine football player himself. He was a freshman at Denton Ryan and then a sophomore at Tulsa Union when Spencer became the offensive line coach for the Hurricanes. He joined the Pitt staff in 2011 so the Leftwich Clan moved again and he landed at North Allegheny High School as a junior. He was the starting quarterback for a state championship there as a senior, but his father only saw two games. 

The life of a college football coach is often one of a nomad. Spencer became the offensive line coach at Arizona in 2022, his fourth school in four years. The family made the hard decision for LaTonne and the three boys – Mack, Cutter, and the youngest, Gage – back in Pittsburgh so that Leftwich wasn’t forced to attend his fourth high school in four years. 

The trip from Tucson, Ariz. to Pittsburgh, Pa. is a hard one. Spencer returned home on bye weeks to see his sons and watch his oldest play. Leftwich became comfortable being the new kid at school. He knew he’d follow in his dad’s footsteps and become a coach by kindergarten. It’s all he ever wanted to do. So, it comes as no surprise that the now 30-year-old Leftwich views it through the lens of his current profession. 

“In hindsight, moving a bunch really helped me become a coach because so much of what we do is relationship building,” Leftwich said. “I’ve had a bunch of opportunities to do that growing up. It wasn’t a ton of fun going through it as a kid, but I feel like it was one of the best things that happened to me and it prepared me for life as a football coach.”

Leftwich and his dad made up for lost time when they both landed at UTEP in 2013. Leftwich started the final four games as a freshman, redshirted as a sophomore in 2014 and then started in seven games in 2015 before a concussion knocked him out for the rest of the season. He never made it back on the field, missing 2016 with a severe shoulder injury that eventually forced him to retire from football. 

But like the constant moving as a kid, Leftwich now sees the career-ending shoulder injury as a blessing in disguise. He finished school early and immediately went into coaching. The recent UTEP grad landed at Lehman High School in Kyle and was ready to call plays for the first time since he was the 13-year-old OC for those pesky Sanger Indians.

Leftwich was immediately humbled. The plays he was drawing up since he was in elementary school weren’t as easy to execute off the page. Lehman went 1-9 and the offense averaged 14 points. He knew he needed help. He needed to find somewhere to go to get a master’s degree in offense. Leftwich found that at Incarnate Word under head coach Eric Morris. 

Leftwich hates to lose and that year at Lehman motivated him. As the oldest of three brothers, he was used to dominating. His dad used to ask him to let Cutter and Gage at least score a few points in a pickup basketball game or in Madden but Leftwich refused. Gage says he once saw his oldest brother eat 18 slices of pizza at CiCi’s in an eating contest. Leftwich would never be part of an offense that averaged only 14 points again. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever been around anyone as competitive as Mack,” Cutter said. “He wants to beat you and just like when he was in eighth grade coaching my fifth-grade team, he wants to run up the score on you. And the one thing about Mack, he’ll let you know about it, too.”

G.J. Kinne became acquainted with that side of Leftwich’s personality when he became the head coach at UIW in 2022. He hired Leftwich as his offensive coordinator and the two led some of the nation’s best offenses over the next three years, including two at Texas State. Kinne laughs when discussing Leftwich’s competitive spirit. He’d turn to look at Leftwich after a touchdown only to see his young offensive coordinator halfway on the field staring down the opposing defensive coordinator and yelling “boom” real loud. 

“I never told him to chill out because deep down I kind of liked it and we’re cut from the same cloth in that way,” Kinne said. “It’s almost like he has two different personalities because he’s not that way in regular life.”

Leftwich is flying solo for the first time in his career. He’s no longer under the wing of Morris or Kinne. He was one of the most coveted offensive coordinators in the country last offseason, interviewing at multiple programs before accepting the job at Texas Tech in December. His Red Raiders head to Salt Lake City in Week 4 to face Utah, one of the schools that tried to hire him. 

Leftwich grew up creating playbooks based off the Leach Air Raid that became popular during his time at Texas Tech. Leftwich cut his teeth in college working for Morris, who played for The Pirate and carries many of the same offensive principles with him. Now, Leftwich gets to call plays in the same stadium as Leach and Kliff Kingsbury. Daunting for some. Exciting for him. He likes that West Texas knows a thing or two about good offenses. And he’s ready to blaze his own path as a play caller. 

“I’m excited to step out on my own and do it somewhere where it is my show, but it is always a collaborative effort,” he said. “I like that the fans expect us to score points; I do as well. I’m just as mad as they are when we don’t score.” 

There’s that competitiveness.