First Look: Baylor Bears vs. ULM Warhawks

vs.

20/19 BAYLOR (2-0) vs. NR/NR ULM (2-1) Sept. 21, 2013 | 3:00 p.m. CT Waco, Texas | Floyd Casey Stadium (50,000) TV: FOX Sports 1

Listen | Gametracker | Notes | Tickets | SportStream | Gameday Central

OPPONENT: ULM Warhawks (Sun Belt)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE: ULMWarhawks.com (same people who made this AMAZING video in 2011)
2013 ROSTER, DEPTH CHART (opens as a .pdf)
LAST MEETING (between the teams): 47-42 Baylor win, ODB Game Hub, Highlights
LAST GAME (for ULM): 21-19 win over Wake Forest
SB NATION BLOG: ULM doesn't have one.
SPREAD: Baylor -27 (or 28, depending on the place)
TV COVERAGE: Fox Sports 1
WEATHER FORECAST: High of 88 for Saturday, 40% chance of rain

SB Nation Preview: How High Can You Fly?

Obviously, this schedule was made before the season -- 7 months ago, in fact-- and doesn't show results.  So far, the Warhawks are 2-1, with one disappointing offensive show at Oklahoma in the season opener (they lost 34-0), a home win over Grambling (48-10), and a close road win this past weekend over Wake Forest (21-19).  Overall, I think ULM Head Coach Todd Berry would probably say he's where he expected to be, record-wise, but is disappointed in his team so far, especially on offense.  Kolton Browning hasn't been as sharp as he was last season, and their offense as a whole has suffered.

STATISTICS

Before I go any further, let me say that I hate the nnew stats page at the NCAA website.  They didn't need to change the way they did things before, but since they did, I won't have the paste-able table of stats for each team like I used to.  So thank the NCAA for that.  Here's what we do have.

Gone are the comparison to national and league leaders (for an example, look here).  Gone are stats like sacks and tackles for loss in a collected, easy-to-use format.  Gone is any semblance of sanity in how the NCAA approaches team reports.

The thing about ULM we don't know as of yet is how good OU's defense actually is.  If you believe OU's defense is superb, the shutout in Norman looks better for the Warhawks.  If you don't, you start wondering where the high-flying ULM attack went.  The fact that they didn't exactly light up the scoreboard against Wake this past weekend should trouble even the most ardent ULM supporters.  The flip side to that, however, is that Wake's offense is designed to slow games down and limit opposing possessions.  It's just impossible to know.

I'll go into more detail about ULM later this week, once the FootballOutsiders stats update and we get a better picture of what we're facing.  Before last week, F/+ had them ranked 80th in the country, up 3 spots from the week before.  FEI was much more favorable, ranking the Warhawks 69th, while S&P+ puts them at 86.  I'm not sure what a close win over Wake, a team ranked below them in all three metrics, will do, but it seems clear that Baylor should be the large favorite in this game that it is.

One thing we do know is that Baylor fans who saw the game last year or paid attention at the time should recognize quite a few of the names.  QB Kolton Browning, who lit up our defense last year for 270+ yards passing and another 60+ rushing, is back and in charge once again.  As are starting RBs Jyruss Edwards and DeVontae McNeal.  McNeal didn't play against us last year, but Edwards did, running for 124 yards on 21 carries against our beleaguered defensive front.  At WR, ULM returned 4 of their top 5 targets from last season.  Rashon Ceasar leads the way in receptions this year from that group, followed by Tavarese Maye and Je'Ron Hamm.  Whether ULM recruits guys that have awesome names on purpose is not known at this time.

On their offensive line, ULM brought back 4 of their 5 starters from a year ago to form a group that, coming into this season, had a total of 87 starts between them.  Those numbers have now all gone up.  New RG Ben Risenhoover (another awesome name!) is the least-experienced among them.  All in all, on offense, this team should clearly be a step up from both Wofford and Buffalo, and Browning ("the poor man's Johnny Manziel" as Prashanth called him) is a particularly dangerous player.  He nearly beat us last year, and though he hasn't played as well in 2013, he's still a formidable, experienced foe.  (Stats below from 2012.)

On defense, the Warhawks run that odd 3-3-5 stack formation as their base.  Last year, we passed almost at will on them, but they were actually able to do an admirable job bottling up our running game, holding us to only 178 yards on the ground.  Of course, that was before the Lache Seastrunk era had truly begun at Baylor, so take those numbers with a grain of salt. On their defense, Bill Connelly says in the preview linked above...

ULM's offense wasn't amazingly explosive, but the Warhawks and coordinator Troy Reffett's 3-3-5 defense made sure that opponents weren't either. ULM suffered all sorts of glitches on passing downs, in terms of both allowing opponents to move the chains and leaking a few too many big plays, but they were confusing and efficient early in downs. The 3-3-5 certainly allows you the speed to form a cloud in front of a given play and swarm to the ball, and ULM had the depth to pull this off in 2012.

That's pretty much what the 3-3-5 is intended to do: form a cloud over the top with 5 DBs on the field and confuse the OL with a variety of blitzes and stunts up front.  As he says, why ULM had so many problems on clear passing downs (something we took advantage of a year ago) is a mystery.  (Stats below are from 2012.)

Another thing Bill mentions that is worth noting is the incredible number of returning players ULM has on their defensive line.  To a man, everyone who notched any kind of statistic on their DL last year, came back this year.  The same isn't true for their LB corps, which lost both its #1 and #3 tacklers, or the secondary, which fared better losing only two backups from last year to graduation.

BOTTOM LINE:

We're not playing a team on the level of Buffalo or Wofford this week. ULM is a team, particularly on defense, that has tremendous depth, with an unusually high number of players having logged a ton of time over the past 2 years, especially.  They are also more skilled on offense than they've looked thus far from the stats alone.  This is clearly Baylor's biggest challenge yet, especially for our defense.  I haven't seen anything that makes me fear the ULM defense much, if at all.

But there is this...

I think that game might have taken a year off my life, at least.