WACO, Texas – When the final seconds ticked off the clock at McLane Stadium on Saturday, Baylor’s (5-4, 3-3) 30-3 rout of UCF left little doubt — this was the most complete performance of the season from Dave Aranda’s Bears.
The offense, for the most part, played a clean game and jumped out to a 20-0 lead in the first half. The defense stifled UCF’s (4-4, 1-4) strong rushing attack and pitched a near shutout; the Knights were held scoreless on 11 of their 12 drives. Most importantly, though, Baylor won the turnover battle (2-to-1) for the first time in Big 12 play this year.
“It’s always good to get a win; that was something that we needed, and we’ve been pushing really hard to get it,” Aranda said post-game. “That’s the team that we’ve seen and we’ve known, so to get other people to see it is really fulfilling. The thing now for us is that we know we can meet the standard, so we need to be able to meet the standard every time out.”
Although there were many positive takeaways from the blowout win, and hopefully those positives are built on across the final three games, it begs the question: where has this been all year, and why did it take so long to accomplish? Plus, what changed after the back-to-back losses to TCU and No. 21 Cincinnati?
Well, the easy answer for what changed, starting with the offense, is that quarterback Sawyer Robertson was instructed all week to ask for the ball if the Bears won the opening coin toss.
Baylor ended up winning the toss and elected to receive. Starting with the ball, the offense marched down the field with ease. Once in the red zone, Robertson lobbed a ball to tight end Michael Trigg (5 rec, 82 yards), who came down with the athletic grab over a defender for a 13-yard touchdown to get the Bears on the board.
“Anytime teams try to man us up, I’m going to throw it up to those guys,” Robertson said of his elite group of pass catchers. “Trigg is obviously so tall with long arms and athletic, he has an easier time making those 50-50 plays. It’s my job to give him a catchable ball. He had a great game today and sparked it. I love that for him.”
Aranda’s defense responded with a timely three-and-out, and Robertson brought the Bears right back down the field. This time, he connected with wide receiver Josh Cameron (3 rec, 5 yards) on a slant for a two-yard score, giving Baylor a tone-setting 14-0 lead just 10 minutes into the game.
It marked the first time this fall against a Power Four opponent where the Bears held a two-score lead in the first quarter. Entering Saturday, they had been outscored by Power Four opponents in first quarters, 48-to-23.
“They were the ones who were on their heels,” Robertson said of UCF having to play from behind. “They were the ones going for a lot of those fourth downs in the fringe area — 50-to-40-yard line. Our defense did a great job stopping them on all of those. It’s been the other way around, where we’re the ones that are having to convert those. For the first time this season, they were the ones having to do that.”
From that point on, Baylor extended its lead even further, 20-0, and was able to lean on its ground game for much of the afternoon, with freshman running back Caden Knighten setting career highs in rushes (21) and yards (104). It was also the first game since offensive line coach Mason Miller had resigned on Monday due to “personal reasons,” but the boys up front showed no signs of panic.
“He’s a tough kid; you have to be tough to play running back,” Robertson said of Knighten. “It starts up front with the O-line. The O-line was motivated. They established the line of scrimmage and gave him rushing lanes. He did a great job and made some plays. He has a unique ability to make people miss with spin moves — whatever it was — that fed into the sideline energy. He definitely sparked us a few times, and I thought he played great.”
Defensively, Baylor easily played its best game of the season, neutralizing UCF’s potent rushing attack to the tune of a season-low 74 yards and an average of 3.2 yards per carry. It also helped that the Bears got out to an early lead, forcing the Knights to try to find success through the air, but quarterback Tayven Jackson was inefficient, going 18-of-33 for 151 yards and tossing two interceptions.
“I thought we were able to simplify some things,” Aranda said of the defense’s newfound success. “If there were five calls. Today, there were three. I thought that we really honed in on their core stuff. They ran their core stuff, which helped.”
He added, “In the past, there have been too many calls, and we honed in on core stuff, and the team we played didn’t run them. It lined up today, which was good. More than that, though, is the guys woke up and chose to be great and chose to, no matter what, if stuff didn’t line up, they were going to go attack it — that was the biggest thing.”
The most impressive stat, however, was that UCF’s three total points marked the fewest points Baylor has allowed against a Big 12 foe since holding Kansas State to just a field goal in 2006. The Bears also completely dominated the Knights on third- and fourth downs, holding them to a 7% (1-of-14) conversion rate.
“I think so much of what the defense needed was something positive, something to go good,” Aranda said. “There’s faith, faith, faith, but there’s gotta be something on the other side of that. Once there is that, then all of a sudden, guys put their cleats into the grass, and they can play with a little more [fire], and they can react a little bit faster. I think that’s the way we’re built and designed. Once there’s a little bit of success, we were able to take off.”
But as for why it took until Week 9 for the Bears to play with a sense of urgency for the majority of a contest, there’s no clear answer to the million-dollar question. Today was far from perfect, yet it was a pretty clean performance, and the Bears steamrolled a scrappy UCF team.
It’s maddening that it took this long to come together and arguably adds more frustration, knowing what this team could have been capable of at its peak. With three games to go, it’s likely too little, too late to completely turn the season around, but if Baylor had played like this from the jump, starting on Aug. 29 against Auburn, the conversations surrounding this year and Aranda’s job security would be completely different.
Hindsight, of course, is 20/20, but Saturday was another feather in the cap of Aranda’s tenure, where you seemingly ask yourself on a weekly basis, “What could have been had....?” or “What could have been if....?”
The Bears (5-4, 3-3) will have a bye week before resuming action against No. 24 Utah (7-2, 4-2) on Saturday, Nov. 15, at McLane Stadium. The game time has yet to be determined.
