I fully intended, after getting home late from work and dinner, to throttle down the ragewagon about the CFB Playoff and head to bed early, since I'm traveling tomorrow and will need to get up early to pack. Turns out the ragewolf dwelling within could not be so easily sated, and I needed something to do.
So here we are to look once again at Baylor's 2014 stats on both sides of the ball. If you recall, I used these threads last year to track potential records we might break. I'm not doing that now. Instead, I'm going to focus entirely on what has happened with our guys, where we rank in this year's stats, and go from there. We'll start on offense:
Baylor Team Summary
So far this season, the Bears are averaging almost 7 plays more per game than in 2013 but about 33 yards fewer. That leads to nearly a full yard less per play on the season, which would concern me if we weren't actually averaging exactly one more first down per game, or if we didn't still have Tech and OSU, two bad defenses, still on the schedule.
One really good thing that deserves mentioning is that our defense is giving up right around 38 fewer yards and just over 1.5 fewer first downs per game. Nearly all of that improvement comes through rush defense (-37.6 ypg, -.6 ypc); our pass defense is giving up almost exactly the same yards per game as last year (-.5 ypg).
Baylor National Ranks in Offensive Categories
(Big 12 Ranks in Parenthesis)
Scoring Offense: 1 (1)
Total Offense: 1 (1)
Passing Offense: 3 (1)
Rushing Offense: 23 (1)
Tackles for Loss Allowed: 5 (1)
Team Passing Efficiency: 8 (1)
Pass Yards/Completion: 6 (1)
Sacks Allowed: 27 (3)
First Downs Offense: 5 (1)
Fourth Down Conv. %: 6 (1)
As always, Sports-Reference's numbers are not official. They're close.
The Quarterbacks
Dragged down by a relatively low completion percentage, Petty has hung around the 152-153 mark in passer rating for a while now. Barring something incredible happening in the next three games (which is entirely possible given who we're playing the next two weeks), he's almost certainly going to finish the season with a huge dropoff in that regard from a year ago. Still, if we win out and make the Playoff, it won't matter all that much.
The Running Backs
I took everyone out of this chart that isn't: a) actually a running back, or b) hasn't carried the ball more than a dozen times this season. As you can see, the chart is organized by number of carries.
The big thing here that strikes me as odd is that Bryce only has 3 rushing touchdowns on the season. Last year he had 14. I imagine a big part of that is the desire to protect him while he was hurt, and it's still possible he racks up a few in coming games. We have at least 4 left to play, after all.
The Wide Receivers
For this one, I just took out everyone who didn't have a catch at all, leaving guys like Penning, Chafin, and Jefferson in there.
Coleman has finally taken over the lead in catches in recent weeks, mostly because he caught somewhere around a million against Oklahoma in Norman. He's also taken the lead in yards from freshman K.D. Cannon. It's starting to look like Goodley won't get back to 1,000 this year unless he blows up in one of the remaining games.
Baylor National Ranks in Defensive Categories
(Big 12 Ranks in Parenthesis)
Total Defense: 14 (1)
Scoring Defense: 19 (1)
Team Sacks: 16 (2)
Pass Efficiency Defense: 28 (3)
Tackles for Loss: 10 (2)
Pass Defense: 45 (3)
Rush Defense: 11 (1)
First Downs Defense: 6 (1)
3rd Down % Defense: 16 (3)
4th Down % Defense: 4 (1)
Whenever I did this last year, I did it because our offensive numbers were so gawdy and it was fun to wonder if we'd break the all-time points record. This year, I'm doing it mostly to highlight what our defense has done, particularly against the run. Phil Bennett's group, derided for so long by so many (yours truly included), has turned into an arguably great unit, especially considering the pace at which we play and how that affects the number of plays and possessions our opponents get in turn.
Because Sports-Reference is awful with defensive stats, I won't use them here. Instead, we're pulling straight from BaylorBears.com's cumulative statistics:
If there are names you don't recognize above, know that they are probably walk-ons and the like participating on special teams. If you happen to notice that LaQuan McGowan has a tackle, say a prayer tonight for whichever poor soul caught the other end of that one.
Through 9 games, Baylor's defense now has 69 tackles for loss and 28 sacks. We had 99 tackles for loss and 32 sacks a year ago in 13 games. We're now on pace to match last year's total in tackles for loss almost exactly but smash the total in sacks with just over 40.