The Football Brainiacs

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A few years ago we probably wouldn’t even had to bother previewing this game. But Art Briles has brought Baylor out of their Kansas-like slumber and onto the championship road.

Baylor is aggressive on both sides of the ball. On defense they play an attacking style defense with corners that get in the face of receivers and challenge them. They aren’t the most talented bunch, but they’ve got some guys on the defensive line that are certainly notable. Everyone knows 6’9″ defensive end Shawn Oakman. But they’ve also got an interior defensive lineman that I recall really wishing OU would’ve offered sooner. His name is Andrew Billings and though he’s a bit sawed off, he’s explosive and strong. If memory serves me correctly, he was a state championship power lifter back in high school. Though I never was one, I spent plenty of time around power lifters, including former US Olympian Shane Hamman, and I know just how explosive those guys can become. Through repeated and controlled incremental increases of Olympic movements, I’ve seen girls and guys alike turn into hyper-explosive athletes. Billings definitely fits that bill.

But while Baylor’s defense has improved over the years, it’s still their offense that scares everyone. Baylor stretches you in every way imaginable. They always have a great running game, and they include the addition of the QB run game to help that along. And while most spread teams build their offense around their quick game, Baylor takes as many deep shots as just about anyone. They align their receivers as far wide as they can, and they love taking an outside release to open the field even wider.

Earlier this season the Baylor offense absolutely embarrassed Gary Patterson’s TCU defense and that is no small feat. So can OU’s defense hold up? Here are a couple key reasons I think Oklahoma has a good chance of putting on a quality performance against Baylor and ultimately winning the game…perhaps even winning soundly.

1. Preparation (Insider Note): Last week I talked to a source who has never led me astray, and he told me an interesting note that I didn’t divulge on the site because I figured it would cause a stir before the Iowa State game. Now that OU has demolished Iowa State, I feel comfortable passing the info along. I was told that OU actually used much of the bye week, and some of the Iowa State prep week, working on Baylor. That means, according to my source (again, I can’t recall a time he’s ever been wrong), OU has been preparing for Baylor for the better part of three weeks.

This has the feel of one of those games where Bob Stoops has made the decision that the team is going to be absolutely ready to battle. When coach Stoops fully and completely focuses on a particular team, they usually don’t fare well against his squad.

2. The Psyche of Mikey: For large portions of this season, the Oklahoma defense has seemed content to sit back and play, what most would consider, a passive defense. We’ve see a ton of Cover-3 on the back end that, while is a pattern match defense, often leaves holes for opposing offenses. We’ve also seen some reluctance to let the dogs loose up front. Last week against Iowa State, OU got back to what made the Mike Stoops defense start to look closer to what we expect of an Oklahoma team. We saw more pressure and more man coverage on the back end.

I mentioned above that OU has been preparing for Baylor for three weeks, and I actually believe that OU even used the Iowa State game to play something closer to the defensive approach we can expect to on Saturday.

One of the more telling things that happened last week was when OU faced a 2×2 set on a few occasions, they played press-man coverage on both edges with a single high safety. Normally, you’ll only see Oklahoma press to the boundary or press with split-safety coverage. But OU pressed both edges. That’s the first time I’ve seen that this season, and it might foretell what they plan on doing against Baylor (at least in certain situations). Press coverage should help take away the quick game and can disrupt the timing of routes. I expect to see Mike pressure Bryce Petty a lot. Just like we saw West Virginia do, right?

Well, right and wrong. Right in that I expect him to pressure and play a lot of man coverage on the back end, but wrong in that it wasn’t the WVU coach that cracked the Baylor code. It was actually Mike Stoops that initiated that type of pressure defense out of a Cover-1 call last year in Waco. Not a lot of people took note of what he did because the final score didn’t look so hot. But those of us who watched the game know the defense actually played well and if it weren’t for the offense stalling and some off-sides calls, Oklahoma’s defense probably would have really been nails for the entire game.

If Mike does decide to go that route again, I just hope he will stay with it even if Baylor gets a couple deep shots early. You’ve got to have the stomach to play that kind of defense and trust they can’t hit those shots all day.

A Quick Note on What I’d Do:

So I am totally on board with what Mike did last year. Again, I think the only way to play a team like Baylor is with about 70% man coverage and pressure. But I’d add one of thing that I don’t necessarily expect from Oklahoma, but I’d still like to see. I know a lot of folks will disagree with me on this because of Baylor’s ability to run the ball, but I’d actually consider starting out by playing everything out of a 2-deep shell.

Last week TCU played WVU like that for much of the game and I kept thinking, “West Virginia is going to run all over them.” And at times they did, but over the course of the game it ultimately forced WVU to run the ball more than they would have liked. And it allowed TCU to play their corners more aggressively, which proved successful.

I think if you’re going to play Baylor out of a 2-deep shell, you’re going to want to align your corners just outside the box, similar to Michigan State’s quarters alignment. The beauty of the 2-deep is you can show Petty and the Baylor offense the same thing, but OU has shown on a number of occasions they can show 2-deep pre-snap look and then alter their coverage into a number of different things.

One of the my favorite things they go to out of that pre-snap look is a ‘Man-1 robber.’ I think you try this coverage early, because you allow your secondary guys time to acclimate to Baylor’s explosive wide receivers. Obviously some may argue that you don’t want to let the run game get going early, but I’d simply bring my safeties down then perhaps stagger them slightly to the strength of offense’s formation and tell them to play aggressive early and have my corners to give more ground after the snap.

Either way, I really feel Oklahoma is going to be ready for this game. And I’m hopeful we will see a great performance from the Sooners. It goes without saying Oklahoma could really use a big win here. Playoff chances or not…shutting Baylor up for a while is prize enough.