Behind Enemy Lines: What Texas Tech is Saying About Baylor
The bye week for Baylor couldn’t have come at a better time to help save the sanity of everyone associated with the program. The Bears have shown signs of being a good football team over the first course of the season, but slow starts and an inability to finish games continue to be a theme under head coach Dave Aranda.
After a week of reflection and healing, Baylor (2-4, 0-3) will head to Lubbock this week to face a Texas Tech team riding a six-game home winning streak at Jones AT&T Stadium. Texas Tech (5-1, 3-0) head coach Joey McGuire joined 365 Sports earlier this week and discussed how his team can’t take the Bears for granted despite their struggles this season.
“Baylor’s a good football team. Honestly, they could easily be 4-2 at the moment if they didn’t have such a bad start against BYU, and they started well against Iowa State,” McGuire said. “They played four quarters of good football against Colorado, but one drive did them in against the best quarterback in the nation, in my opinion, Shedeur Sanders. We’ve got to do a good job preparing for them because, at some point, they're going to put together a full game of good ball.”
One of the biggest challenges for Tech in preparing for Baylor this season is the Bears' change in offense. Instead of the Jeff Grimes ‘RVO’ approach that ultimately flamed out, Baylor now runs an offense eerily similar to the one used by the Red Raiders.
“[Jake] Spavital is of the same tree as Zach Kittley, Kliff Kingsbury and Dana Holgerson. They all have a little of that Mike Leach air raid in them,” McGuire said. “I think Sawyer Robertson has done an excellent job of running that offense this season. They have receivers that can make some plays and create problems in space, which similar offenses have given us some problems this season.”
While the Texas Tech defense is the team's weakness, they have been able to create 68 points off turnovers this season, the most since 2017. McGuire knows that his secondary will need to step up again this week to beat Baylor.
“Like Baylor, we were able to get healthy over the off week, which will definitely help, but we have to play well on defense this Saturday,” McGuire said. “One thing we’ve been able to do consistently is create a lot of turnovers and score off of them, so we have to do that again against the Bears.”
The elephant in the room when these two programs get together lately is the staff crossover, with a majority of the current Texas Tech staff coming over from Baylor. Now that some time has passed, it’s easier for McGuire, but he still gets a little emotional.
“I’d be lying if I said there weren't any emotions attached to this matchup. Man, I love that place. It was good to me and my family,” McGuire said. “You know, Garrett [McGuire] is a Baylor Bear, and it will always be a special place. I’m at Texas Tech because of my time at Baylor. There are still some older guys on that team, like Matt Jones and Garmon Randolph, who I was their position coach, and Steve Linton was on our team last season.”
Lubbock will be lit on Saturday, as it’s a homecoming sellout for the Red Raiders. It will be the 83rd meeting between the two programs, with Baylor holding the series lead 41-40-1. Kickoff is set for 3 p.m. and will be aired on ESPN2. Be sure to tune into the 365 Sports pregame show from 9-10:30 a.m. on YouTube or KWTX.