Coach Jim Grobe Press Conference Notes

Coach Grobe touched on a number of matters, including clarifying that Blanchard and Jefferson will not play against SMU. The big notes for me were on injuries, the focus for the SMU game, and Grobe’s comments on playing time for backups when Baylor leads.

Injuries

Coach Grobe had this to say on Blanchard’s availability, "Travon is a definite no. He’s probably further along than we thought."

Grobe added this on Johnny Jefferson, "Johnny has to get in shape. That’s the problem for him. He’s missed so much playing time." "He’s probably physically capable, but he’s got to get in shape." Grobe went on to say, "The real blessing is we don’t need him yet." "As long as the other three stay healthy, we’ll be patient in bringing him along."

It sounds like nobody else is injured because Grobe said, "I don’t think we have any concerns," when discussing that subject.

SMU

Grobe praised Chad Morris and discussed the difficulties his offense presented while Morris was at Clemson and Grobe was at Wake Forrest.

For an area of concern, Grobe stated, "You look at SMU against North Texas, one of the things they made them do was miss a lot (of tackles)." Grobe repeated the focus on tackling while adding, "SMU’s going to give us a challenge tackling those skilled guys. I thought we tackled a little better than I expected."

John Werner brought up that the team had 15 tackles for loss against Northwestern State, which prompted Grobe to say, "I was wondering how many? We got a lot of tackles behind the line of scrimmage."

Playing backups

Grobe seems to want to go to the backups earlier, if Baylor builds a lead like they did against Northwestern State. That may be tough against SMU, but Grobe said, "Zach Smith, my disappointment was we didn’t get enough snaps for him." "We feel like we have a really good quarterback backing up Seth Russell right now." Grobe also said they waited a little too long to put JaMycal Hasty in.

Other Notes

Grobe sounded pleased with the performance. The team went out and looked great, and Grobe was particularly pleased with special teams. He thought Drew Galtiz could improve his net punting, but when the team opens with a 55-7 win, there’s not a ton of negative takeaways, and Grobe didn’t have many.

The Bears play SMU at 2:30 PM Saturday at McLane Stadium. The game will be televised on Fox Sports 1.