Baylor cruises past Buffalo on the road 63-21

After going into the half up 35-0, Baylor seemed to let off the gas a bit on defense, allowing the first three touchdowns of the season in the second half and over 300 yards of offense to the Buffalo Bulls.  That's something we can and will talk about in coming days, whether it's a harbinger of problems to come or simply the result of a lackadaisical effort in the second half after the game was well in-hand.

For Baylor, Bryce Petty returned to rave reviews, throwing for 416 yards and 4 TDs on 23/34 passing.  Freshman KD Cannon built on last week's breakout performance with 6 catches for 139 yards and 1 TD, an 89-yarder in the first quarter that electrified the national audience.  Junior Jay Lee added 2 TDs of his own among his team-leading 9 catches for 136 yards and continues to look good in this young season.  Lynx Hawthorne also added 7 catches of his own for 123 yards and the first two TDs of his career.  The full stats from the game:

All those stats on the right are not exactly comforting me, or anyone else it seems, right now.  At the half, Buffalo had a grand total of 78 yards of offense.  They finished with 394.  That's 316 yards in the second half.  I don't want to take anything away from Buffalo, who might be a legitimately good team on offense this season, but that's not good.  It's certainly not anywhere close to the defense we saw the first two games this season or the defense we'll have to play going forward if we truly want to compete in the Big 12 this season.  Xavien Howard continued to look good, but other than that, we had breakdowns in tackling, coverage down the field, you name it.  I don't want to make more of it than it is, so I'll stop there.  An optimist would say it gives us things to work on going forward.  A pessimist, that we might have been exposed just a little bit.  Time will tell which is true, if not both.

Focusing for a moment on the good -- Bryce Petty is healthy, our young receivers are as still as good as we thought, and we didn't have any major injuries that I saw in this game.  Hopefully we come out of it a better team overall for the trouble, and none of us ever have to listen to Danny Kanell spend 20 minutes trying to fashion ridiculous scenarios where an undefeated Big 12 team misses the CFB Playoff again.  Because that was easily the worst part of the entire game.

I'll probably update this post throughout the night, so check back.