Athletic Ability Highlighting Baylor's Reconstructed Offensive Line
In two seasons at Baylor, offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes and offensive line coach Eric Mateos have seen their offensive line play well with a backbone of experience. That backbone is now gone as five starters their 11,977 career snaps departed the program after the 2022 season.
Four of the five departed had remained for the 2022 season following after playing a critical roll in Baylor’s 2021 Big 12 Championship and Sugar Bowl winning team. It was a unit that led the Bears to a Big 12 leading 63 total rushing touchdowns over the last two seasons, including 29 in 2021 and 34 in 2022.
Recontructing the unit started in the spring with the additions of BYU transfers Clark and Campbell Barrington, slated for left tackle and center, who combined for 3,255 career snaps. The brothers meshed with projected left guard starter Gavin Byers, a senior and a part-time starter over the last two seasons at right tackle. Byers has 1,017 snaps of his own.
The game experience in the battle for the right guard and right tackle positions is negligible. Redshirt freshman Kaden Sieracki, redshirt sophomore Tate Williams and redshirt senior Elijah Ellis have played less than 100 combined snaps in offensive sets in their careers. Sieracki is penciled in as the starter at guard while Williams and Ellis are battling for the right tackle position.
How could it be that there is some extremely cautious optimism floating around about Baylor’s OL for 2023? There is a translucency in the skin of the somewhat inexperienced group showing glimpses of promise for the unit because of one specific characteristic: it’s overall athletic ability.
“I think their ceiling is very high,” head coach Dave Aranda said. “Their athleticism is very high. I think this could be one of the more athletic groups that Grimey and Eric have ever had. Could be the most athletic group.”
The athletic ability isn’t much of a surprise considering the blueprint for executing the RVO scheme includes recruiting strong athletes with good motors who are capable of getting out and showcasing said athletic ability on the move. But to call it the most athletic group that Grimes and Mateos have ever coached is setting the bar pretty high. To put the group’s athletic ability in perspective, the total linemen running at or over a certain peak speed on GPS in the spring reportedly more than doubled the total from the previous two off seasons.
But there will be the fear of inexperience and empty athleticism that happens until it actually shows up on the field. The right side of the line looks to be finding its way, but there are still questions needing to be answered going into the first game. Even recently there was a switch of Sieracki from tackle to guard and Williams from guard to tackle.
With the movement comes mistakes, and only more reps will help that.
“So some of these misfires, so to speak, or miss IDs and everything... that's how they're learning it,” Aranda said. “For us to go into this game, to limit kind of those opportunities, to maximize the things that we're really doing well, but then still grow in those areas that are maybe not where we want to be, is a way critical thing. I have total trust and Grimey to be able to do that.”
There is comfort for Aranda in knowing that a leader in Clark Barrington has truly emerged in room after losing so much experience. Barrington, a 2021 All-American at BYU, started 40 games for the Cougars and had a chance to head to the NFL before he decided to spend one more year in the college ranks.
Leadership was almost as big of a reason for being a priority as his ability was.
“We had a team meeting during fall camp, it was at night,” Aranda said. “Clark got up and spoke and spoke from the heart and it was just way powerful. There's guys already kind of seeing in him, the leader that he was, and the person that he was, but it was after that talk, I know that everyone could see it. That was a way kind of coalescing there around him.”
Campbell, Clark’s younger brother, has also been a layer of leadership and grit, but in a different way.
“There's been a fair amount of scrap with him, a fair amount of fight with him,” Aranda said. “And that's been good to see. It's a 1-2 punch there. So if you get in Clark's way, you got Campbell right behind him. It’s pretty cool to see and that has helped solidify that offensive unit and given them a really good identity.”