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Ho-hum, just another 60-point* and 600-yard offensive performance from the Bears today despite pulling every offensive starter at halftime and basically coasting the rest of the way.
*The defense scored 7 of those points on a fumble return by Xavien Howard, so it's actually a 59-point offensive performance.
Baylor's offense finished with 644 yards on 82 plays (basically 8 yards per play), no turnovers (the only one listed for the Bears was the muffed punt), and a fairly good balance of 363 through the air and 281 on the ground. As I think just about every Baylor fan predicted, Art Briles' boys did not score 100 points but maybe could have, considering how things were going.
On defense, Baylor gave up 75 yards on 9 plays on Kansas' first drive of the game, then held he Jayhawks to just 152 yards on 66 plays the rest of the way. That's 2.3 yards per play after the first drive, and 3.0 for the entire game. Xavien Howard picked off one Ryan Willis pass and then returned a Willis fumble for a TD shortly thereafter, and Aiavion Edwards (I think) picked up another caused by Travon Blanchard.
All-in-all, the only real negative I can come up with from this game is that it took 57.5 minutes of game time for Fox's Tim Brando to pronounce Jarrett Stidham's name correctly, and that was after (apparently) being told twice. LaQuan McGowan caught a TD pass that set the Twitterverse aflame; Phil Bennett shoved it in his haters' faces by orchestrating a dominant defensive effort (of Kansas, but still); I don't know of any major or even minor injuries at this point from this game; and Baylor turned in the devastatingly dominant effort everyone expected and hoped to see.
Outside of this game, the obvious negative from today's events is OU's loss to Texas. That result may cost Baylor and/or TCU a potential win over a ranked team, and it may have cost us College Gameday in a month considering the weekend of November 14 is really light on other options. What I'm saying is: thanks, Sooners!
Players of the Game:
RB Shock Linwood -- 13/135 and 1 TD (all in first half)
WR Corey Coleman -- 7/108 and 2 TDs (all in first half)
You could include Seth Russell here if you wanted to, and he didn't see anything after halftime, either. It's really hard, generally, to specify individual efforts in a game that was over by halftime and the stats aren't really that outrageous, as a result.
5 Quick Thoughts:
- Travon Blanchard continues to improve every week to the point that he was one of our best defensive players on the field today. Xavien Howard and Ryan Reid also played really well, all things considered. I was very happy with the defensive performance on the whole.
- I feel very confident that Jarrett Stidham could run this offense as the starter right now. I know that's saying a lot considering his limited experience, but I believe it to be true. And I have no idea how you read his name and think "Stide-um" or "Stydham" or whatever.
- Including LaQuan McGowan, 11 different Bears caught passes today. Coleman led the way with 7/105/2, and Ishmael Zamora, Davion Hall, and McGowan also had TDs. I was particularly happy with Hall considering it's his sophomore year, and things probably haven't gone as well as he expected.
- I don't know yet how many QB hurries we had against Kansas, but I'm going to bet it was a lot. Baylor had him off-balance for the majority of the game, and he finished just 20/36 for 158 yards with the one TD and one INT. That's 4.4 yards per attempt.
- Baylor is 5-0 and finally looks to be rounding into the form we expected after three consecutive dominant efforts against Rice, Texas Tech, and Kansas. West Virginia is next!