Baylor Offensive Depth Chart vs. Buffalo

With news breaking earlier today that QB Bryce Petty will return to action Friday night against the Buffalo Bulls, but WRs Corey Coleman and Antwan Goodley will not, here's our depth chart as of this moment.

I wasn't kidding when I said there were no jokes in this post.  That wasn't a joke.

If you've taken a gander at this week's game notes (opens as a .pdf), you'll notice that my chart does not look like theirs.  That's for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, the following players will reportedly not play:

• RB Devin Chafin
  
• WR Corey Coleman
• WR Antwan Goodley

That's in addition to WRs Clay Fuller and Levi Norwood, who obviously won't play.  The absence of 3 of our top 4 IRs leaves us a bit shorthanded at that position, leading Briles to say (I assume) that they have considered playing him repeatedly.  The chart above reflects my belief that if something happens to Hawthorne or Cannon, they will.  Same thing with Hall or Lee and Zamora.  Both freshmen are traveling with the team for that exact reason.  Last week, we rarely went 4-wide until late in the game, it seemed, so for the most part, Cannon and Hawthorne just rotated for each other.  I would expect to see that again, especially with TE Tre'Von Armstead returning to the lineup this week.  Also, watch out for Feuerbacher to get more time with Penning now that his redshirt is officially gone.

Another thing you'll notice is that the second team OL has changed based on what we saw in the second half of last week's game.  The second group above is the team that played against Northwestern State, with Wilson at LT and Colbert at RT.  The interior there is the same as it always was, except I've now officially moved LaQuan back to the 2nd team since that's where he's played.

A Few Tuesday Night Thoughts

I didn't get to post much today because I was gone virtually all day.  That doesn't mean I stopped thinking about our Baylor Bears.

One thing I kept thinking about is our use of the RBs in our passing offense.  With Petty coming back off his back injury, it seems likely to me that Baylor will attempt to run the ball early and often on Friday night.  That in turn makes it likely that Buffalo will sell out to stop us, forcing Petty and his sore back to beat them.  The short and intermediate passes then take on new importance when we choose to go that direction, as a safety valve and a way to relieve some of the pressure on our offense.

I'm not generally concerned about our rushing offense, but this would be a really good week to get things going in that area.  So far, Buffalo is allowing nearly 200 yards per game this season, albeit with one of those games coming against a triple option team in Army that averaged 6.3 yards per rush.

With help from Kirobaito and @cms186, I'm currently working on a post like this except for Baylor in the Art Briles era.  As I said last night, it seems so far like Briles is significantly more aggressive than the average NFL coach, though he is also relatively inconsistent.  My plan is for that post to go up next week during the bye, since we'll need stuff to talk about around that time, anyway.