[h=1]Inside the Texas Gameplan: Beating Baylor – Part 1[/h] October 2, 2014 by
Ian BoydChange size: A - A - A
Peter Jinkens. (Will Gallagher/IT)
Before Texas lost its starting quarterback, starting center, starting offensive tackles, and starting nose tackle, I deemed a home win over Baylor to be one of the more important achievements that could be had in 2014.
The likely boost in recruiting and the program momentum from setting a baseline for the Strong era that includes beating major rivals at home would have been huge.
Now that re-establishing home field and in-state dominance is off the table, a win over the Sooners takes its rightful place as the sweetest potential prize of the season. That said, a win over Baylor would still be a significant momentum builder for the program and a likely recruiting boon akin to Oklahoma’s win over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
But can it be done?
Part 1: Stopping Baylor
The first thing people think about with Baylor is the unique Art Briles offense, led by Heisman candidate Bryce Petty, awash in gaudy stats, and fresh off a Big 12 title. Needless to say, if Texas can’t play well against the Baylor offense, this game isn’t going to amount to much since there’s little chance of this Longhorn offense of putting more than 30 on the scoreboard.
The Briles offense is best understood as a feat of engineering brilliance. Every part of the machine is minimalist in approach and works in perfect conjunction with the other parts. It’s difficult to stop anything Baylor does because the different concepts feed off one another.
Wide spacing and play-action passing make it hard to get numbers in the box to stop the run. But if you can’t stop the run? Get ready to be pounded up the gut at high speed before ultimately being destroyed by play-action when your players break discipline.
The quarterback is the maestro and it’s the one place, besides OL, where Baylor has to have a lot of experience and skill to be successful.
So far every QB recruited by Briles to Baylor has either thrown for 4k yards in a season or is still an underclassman. Let that sink in and you can begin to understand the brilliance of the Bear machine and the QB factory that Art has built in Waco.
Stopping this iteration of Baylor’s offense ultimately comes down to three main components:
1. Prevent big passing plays
#Analysis, amirite? Baylor kills people by throwing over the top. That’s what they live for, it’s how they manage over 4k yards of passing every season, and it’s how KD Cannon goes for 223 yards in his second game as a college player.
They get there primarily through the play-action passing game and option reads by the receivers that they jokingly call “vertical or not?” Petty will sit back, read the coverage, and then throw to open grass where his blazing fast receivers are running. It’s pretty nasty and similar to Spurrier’s “run and gun” offenses that shredded the SEC in the 90s.
For Texas, this will probably mean some deep alignments and off coverage on the edges. Complain all you like after Petty completes another hitch pass but it’s better than the alternative.
The biggest problem is in matching up with Baylor’s wideouts. The Bears love to line up in 11 personnel with big TE Tre’Von Armstead on the field and flanked by Antwan Goodley, Corey Coleman, and Jay Lee or KD Cannon. In those events, Texas is better off than most teams because the nickel set of Mykkele Thompson, Duke Thomas, and Quandre Diggs is reasonably strong across the board.
But what happens when Baylor goes four wide and attacks Texas’ 4th best coverage player?
2. Stop the run
Of course the trick here is how to get numbers in the box without surrendering plays on the perimeter or deep. Particularly you want to avoid getting beat deep, because Baylor is far more proficient at killing you in that fashion than most teams.
The growing trend in the Big 12 is to play primarily quarters coverage against the Bears, align everyone deep and wide to discourage Petty from calling a deep passing play, and then sneaking a 6th player into the box just before the snap.
For instance:
Against a 2×2 set like this one, Paul Rhoads’ Cyclones would keep their safeties very deep and their linebackers wide but then sneak that Will linebacker towards the box just before the snap. If Petty recognizes it and then hits that Y receiver for an easy five yards or more?
Make the tackle, tip your hat and keep playing, at least they haven’t scored yet.
The Cyclones followed this plan and the result was the following day from Petty: 30-44 passing, 336 yards, 7.6 yards per attempt, one TD, one INT.
You can survive a Petty day of that sort if your efforts are successful in stopping the run.
For Texas this could be the ultimate test for seniors Quandre Diggs, Steve Edmond, and Jordan Hicks in the middle of the field. Have they graduated “spread defense 301” with a high enough grade to handle the Bears’ varying run game?
If you load the box, it becomes difficult to defend the quick screens and POP reads that Baylor relies on when teams play the patient game and deny them easy throws over the top. For instance a lead zone run with a POP slant route attached:
Or with a quick hitch available:
Stopping the hitch is a matter of making the tackle and not allowing much space. Stopping the slant is much trickier and comes down to heady and violent play from the safeties or absurd reflexes from lanky linebackers.
You can’t take everything in this offense away, so teams have found that the best path is to take away the deep bombs, play the run game with an honest front, and make Baylor execute quick throws all the way down the field.
The other method is the Oklahoma St route of 2013. More man coverage, single-deep safety coverages and more players underneath who are available to pursue the ball on the quick hitting pass plays. Here’s the challenge:
The tricky part here, besides the need for the corners to hold up on the outside without help, which is true for any scheme against Baylor, is for the nickel and the safeties.
The nickel and whichever safety drops down has to balance covering the slot receiver across from them with the potential need to come up and force the run.
Oklahoma mitigated this by blitzing the edges a lot and freeing up the slot defenders to play coverage all the way:
If you do this, you free up your coverage players to run with the receivers and focus on things like not biting on Cannon’s double moves and ending up on Sportscenter.
However, now your non-blitzing inside linebacker has to be able to clean up the mess inside and your deep safety has to break hard and instinctively on runs and quick passes over the middle.
The best bet for Texas is probably to mix all of these approaches depending on what personnel Baylor has on the field. When the Bears have a tight end out there? Play single-deep safety coverage, bring Hall down on the edge, and trust the veteran DBs to handle the Bear WRs.
When the Bears go four-wide? Combine quarters coverage with some five-man blitzes. If I were Texas I’d probably trend towards blitzing Edmond and asking Hicks to play the clean-up role. The only missing ingredient to this scheme is having a really good, instinctive, and violent deep safety.
I’m not sure what Texas will do here. Hall is likely to become that player before long, but then who are you asking to play man coverage on the fourth Baylor WR? Haines? Colbert? I don’t think so.
You want to play the 3-3-5 package Texas has used of late and ask Cobbs to play against that receiver? Possible, but now you put an even bigger burden on the inside linebacker and free safety to make good fills against the run and that’s a rough trade for the right to cover Coleman or Cannon with a linebacker.
Another solution is to play Hall on the slot receiver and Colbert or Haines as the deep safety, or to play a 3-2-6 dime package that gets Echols or another corner on the field. If Turner is going to come back, this would be the game for him to do so.
Baylor’s running backs this season are pretty solid. Shock Linwood is a sturdy workhorse in the vein of Terrence Ganaway or Glasco Martin. He can find yardage and is hard to tackle in the open field. Back-up Johnny Jefferson is closer to Lache Seastrunk, although mercifully not as explosive.
The Bears’ actual running game is most threatening when they use Armstead to blow open holes and are willing to include Petty as a running threat, which makes it virtually impossible to outnumber their running game due to their wide splits.
3. Get to Petty
As Charlie Strong noted in his presser, Bryce Petty has not been sacked this season. This is in part because the Bear QB always knows where to go with the ball, in part because his protection is so good, and also because his receivers are generally open.
Baylor left tackle Spencer Drango might be the best in the conference and the Bears are very difficult to get a pass-rush against when they use Armstead as an H-back to essentially serve as an offensive tackle playing the role of blitz pick-up.
You can’t get to Petty unless you make him hold the ball past his first reads but this is hard to do unless you are playing aggressive coverage or you have Baylor in an obvious passing situation.
The two surest ways to get to Petty are either to win the match-up against Drango or to create an interior pass-rush. On the former, a huge game from Caleb Bluiett would go a long way towards helping Texas secure victory since Baylor’s RT probably can’t consistently handle Cedric Reed without some help.
However if Baylor can slide protection over to Bluiett and pick up Reed on the backside with Armstead and the RB, then it’s probably game over for that option.
The other way is to get pressure up the middle with the linebackers on blitzes such as the one diagrammed above or through dominant games by Ridgeway and Brown. This is one area where Texas has a major advantage in this game that cannot be wasted. The coaches need to keep Ridge and Brown fresh and get them playing in the Baylor backfield whenever possible. This might be a good game to rotate in the Poona or to allow Norman and Boyette some snaps on run downs to keep everyone fresh.
Prognosis:
Texas is probably one good linebacker and a few years of experience at safety away from having a reasonable formula for stopping the Baylor attack. As it is, they can probably only hope to contain the Bears and win only if the game’s played in the 20s.
Texas needs a big game from Mykkele Thompson and an even bigger game from Duke Thomas. All of these strategies go up in smoke if they can’t lock down the sidelines without a lot of help and prevent the Bear WRs from beating them over the top.
If they can hold up and force Baylor to play in a box between the hash marks? Then Malcom Brown can have a bigger impact, Texas might get some turnovers, and they might set the offense up with chances to win or at least keep the outcome respectable. We’ll get to the offense next.
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