Gameday Thread: Baylor Travels to Stillwater to Face Oklahoma State

boykin_spaniel said:

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If our DBs had guys just running by them that's one thing. If Coleman for Auburn went for 250 and 3 scores then we have an obvious jimmies and joes issue on defense (side note I'm not comparing us to Ohio State. We have one DL who would make their two deep in Jackie Marshall).

A lot of our defensive issues are breakdowns in fundamentals which is a coaching thing. Poor tackling, poor ball swarming, poor technique in coverage, poor containment, etc.

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Exactly. The bowl game last year against LSU was a talent issue. We literally couldn't run with their receivers.

But when explosive plays are happening because guys are in the wrong gaps or can't set an edge on run plays or get lost in pass coverage, that's not a talent issue. And those things happen to us routinely.

Dia del DougO said:

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Has Baylor really upset a perceived superior opponent since 2019, by having a great game plan, calling a near perfect game and having a team totally fired up and ready?

I'm sure there has been something like that at some point, but I can't think of it.

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Point taken but I think most of those criteria apply to some of the 2021 wins: Texas, OU, OSU in Arlington, Ole Miss. "Great game plan" & "near perfect" execution are very subjective and in the case of the latter probably impossible. Even the championship teams are not near perfect for an entire season. They are close enough to win the games they need to.

FLBear5630 said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Aranda **** the bed again on defense, but Sawyer and the offense were good enough it didn't matter


Aranda proved yet again he needs to be fired, but his supporters will cheer him on all the way to our bowl loss after a 6-6 campaign with guys who deserved much better.

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Really a 17 point win on the road against a B12 opponent is ****ting the bed?

Curious, just where do you guys think Baylor football fits in the football world that road wins by 17 are crap?

By the way, my take on yesterday is any conference win on the road is a good day. Scoring 45 and the game not really a game in the 2nd half, very good day

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Good point: it was a good win for those reasons. But it was ugly and against a really bad team probably at or near their nadir.

Many of us miss the Briles years when we had the nation's best offense averaging 10 wins per year (2011-2015), went to a bowl game every year (including NY6), won conference titles (or at least contended), were ranked almost every week (#2 for three weeks in 2015), had players honored with major awards (Heisman, Belitnikov, etc), had players drafted every year (& some still in the league), and so on. The games were fun to watch and we beat the big boys fairly often, especially Texas & OU.

Some of us also enjoyed 2019 & 2021 when we had good or great defenses with good offenses. The expectations that many of us have is that we should be able to achieve something like that on a regular basis. Considering the successes over the past 15 years under different coaches and the quality of our facilities, that's not an unreasonable expectation.

historian said:

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Dia del DougO said:

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Has Baylor really upset a perceived superior opponent since 2019, by having a great game plan, calling a near perfect game and having a team totally fired up and ready?

I'm sure there has been something like that at some point, but I can't think of it.

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Point taken but I think most of those criteria apply to some of the 2021 wins: Texas, OU, OSU in Arlington, Ole Miss. "Great game plan" & "near perfect" execution are very subjective and in the case of the latter probably impossible. Even the championship teams are not near perfect for an entire season. They are close enough to win the games they need to.

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I agree. Also, there is another team that prepared and is looking to get an edge. At some point, you have to give them credit.

You know me, I am usually closer to the middle, will give credit even if I don't like the and live by the 80/20 rule that we are not the 10% on top, not the 10% on the bottom and are all pretty much in the middle. So, we get a win on the road, put up a lot of points, and get out healthy. All good...

Nice upper mid level Bowl is my goal for the season.

boykin_spaniel said:

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If our DBs had guys just running by them that's one thing. If Coleman for Auburn went for 250 and 3 scores then we have an obvious jimmies and joes issue on defense (side note I'm not comparing us to Ohio State. We have one DL who would make their two deep in Jackie Marshall).

A lot of our defensive issues are breakdowns in fundamentals which is a coaching thing. Poor tackling, poor ball swarming, poor technique in coverage, poor containment, etc.

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I disagree about the talent issues.

We've been running two high safeties all year because Dave doesn't trust the secondary to hang with WRs.

So the primary issue IS a jimmies and joes problem. Despite scheming to provide them support, they are still breaking down and giving up big plays occasionally... which may still be a jimmies and joes issue because better jimmies and joes wouldn't make those types of unforced errors or would make big plays to compensate. If we exclude Samford, how many turnovers has this D taken away?

The 2021 team was Rhule/Joey recruits. I guess it could be debatable that Dave can coach others talent but can't find his own. He was handed a football team unlike any since

Aliceinbubbleland said:

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The 2021 team was Rhule/Joey recruits. I guess it could be debatable that Dave can coach others talent but can't find his own. He was handed a football team unlike any since

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You guys want him gone, it obvious when even a 45 -27 win on the road is a negative. It is not about winning, he is not what you guys and the talking heads on the pay board want. Anyone that knows football knows a conference win on the road by 17 is a good performance. This is personal.

Looks like the coaches definitely want him running

Head coach Dave Aranda on QB Sawyer Robertson being more willing to run against Oklahoma State:

"On the sideline, Spav is yelling for Sawyer to run; I’m yelling for Sawyer to run ... His ability to run greatly maximizes our ability to score, so that was good to see."#SicEm🐻 pic.twitter.com/w8usLRdbi8

— Baylor Bears on SicEm365 (@SicEm365) September 28, 2025

boognish_bear said:

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Looks like the coaches definitely want him running

Head coach Dave Aranda on QB Sawyer Robertson being more willing to run against Oklahoma State:

"On the sideline, Spav is yelling for Sawyer to run; I’m yelling for Sawyer to run ... His ability to run greatly maximizes our ability to score, so that was good to see."#SicEm🐻 pic.twitter.com/w8usLRdbi8

— Baylor Bears on SicEm365 (@SicEm365) September 28, 2025

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So this is on Sawyer?

Throw that boy under the bus Dave.

FLBear5630 said:

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Aliceinbubbleland said:

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The 2021 team was Rhule/Joey recruits. I guess it could be debatable that Dave can coach others talent but can't find his own. He was handed a football team unlike any since

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You guys want him gone, it obvious when even a 45 -27 win on the road is a negative. It is not about winning, he is not what you guys and the talking heads on the pay board want. Anyone that knows football knows a conference win on the road by 17 is a good performance. This is personal.

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I'm still trying to figure out who "you guys" are. It is 90 percent of the board, including the staff here. Not just talking about this game, but every game thus far. It's not haters. It's just football stuff.

At some point you want to see a team jell and not looking for answers. Good that we are 3-2 at least. That's about the pace it's going to continue at best if we don't see some things solidify and get better. The same issues we've been trying to address for three years still keep cropping up. We don't get another Samford, or even another OSU, so at this rate 7-5 is looking like about par. Everyone expected better this year from what I've been reading.

FLBear5630 said:

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Aliceinbubbleland said:

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The 2021 team was Rhule/Joey recruits. I guess it could be debatable that Dave can coach others talent but can't find his own. He was handed a football team unlike any since

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You guys want him gone, it obvious when even a 45 -27 win on the road is a negative. It is not about winning, he is not what you guys and the talking heads on the pay board want. Anyone that knows football knows a conference win on the road by 17 is a good performance. This is personal.

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How exactly are you able to generalize what the entire premium board thinks about Aranda, seeing as you're not a paid member?

Edit: and I happened to just look at the various threads over on the premium board, and there's no less than three that are pumping sunshine, so I don't buy the narrative that everyone hates* him






* The modern woke definition of the word that equates hate to any form of criticism whatsoever

FLBear5630 said:

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Aliceinbubbleland said:

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The 2021 team was Rhule/Joey recruits. I guess it could be debatable that Dave can coach others talent but can't find his own. He was handed a football team unlike any since

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You guys want him gone, it obvious when even a 45 -27 win on the road is a negative. It is not about winning, he is not what you guys and the talking heads on the pay board want. Anyone that knows football knows a conference win on the road by 17 is a good performance. This is personal.

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Since Baylor has decided to join the rest of the world and play the NIL game, we have a winning pct of .610 under Aranda. It seems a certainty that it was lack of NIL that set us back in 22 and 23. That said Aranda does have to do something about the DC position he cannot be HC and be hands on tutor to the titled DC at the same time. That may have been a formula that could work in decades past. But it does not in the modern era.

NIL is the reason Tx St torched us? Surely it wasn't Dave's coaching right?

So then Dave's coaching has us sitting at a 61% winning pct since then woukd be the flip side of your argument.

Dave deserves credit when he wins. I've always stated that. He also deserves to be questioned when he ****s the bed. This fanbase likes to blame everyone but Dave when BU loses

FLBear5630 said:

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Aliceinbubbleland said:

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The 2021 team was Rhule/Joey recruits. I guess it could be debatable that Dave can coach others talent but can't find his own. He was handed a football team unlike any since

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You guys want him gone, it obvious when even a 45 -27 win on the road is a negative. It is not about winning, he is not what you guys and the talking heads on the pay board want. Anyone that knows football knows a conference win on the road by 17 is a good performance. This is personal.

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I'm not one who wants him gone -- I'm on record many times saying I don't want to reset the program with a coaching change. But I do want Dave to fix his damn defense ... and I've lost all faith in his personal ability to do so.

If he doesn't go out and hire an outside defensive coordinator this offseason, there's a good chance I will join those who do want him gone in the near future.

Our defense is a program throttler. It limits our ceiling dramatically. Teams capable of 10-plus wins with a decent defense are topping out at seven or eight wins because of our inability to stop opposing offenses. That's a problem that needs to be fixed. And ASAP.

For this conference I don't think we have a major talent issue. I've stated somewhere on here that our secondary is going to give up a play here and there but it's the little things that have been happening since 2022. Lack of urgency, bad tackling, poor angles, over shooting gaps, plugging wrong gaps, etc. Stuff that can be improved by coaching.

Post-game, Dave Aranda spoke highly of freshman LB Kaleb Burns, who totaled three tackles and a TFL:

"Kaleb is very talented. He’s very smart. He has a mind for football. Football comes easy to him. It’s a language that he eats up — his appetite is strong."#SicEm🐻 pic.twitter.com/5iA96AEvJm

— Baylor Bears on SicEm365 (@SicEm365) September 29, 2025

ESPN FPI Probability of Winning the Big 12:

1. Texas Tech - 31.2%
2. BYU - 25.7%
3. Iowa St - 11.3%
4. ASU - 11.1%
5. Utah - 7.1%
6. TCU - 4.7%
7. Cincinnati - 3.3%
8. Kansas - 1.9%
9. Houston - 1.7%

— WestCoastCFB (@WestCoastCFB) September 28, 2025

Interesting to hear Dave breaking down facing the unknown of a coaching change

Dave Aranda talks about the defensive struggles Baylor had with all of OSU's trick plays:

"When there's stuff coming at you and you're not really sure what form or thing it's going to take, do you play base and try to have eyes on it, or do you pressure it?"

Full quote🐻⤵️ pic.twitter.com/ZBMWLzDHMv

— Baylor Bears on SicEm365 (@SicEm365) September 28, 2025

boognish_bear said:

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ESPN FPI Probability of Winning the Big 12:

1. Texas Tech - 31.2%
2. BYU - 25.7%
3. Iowa St - 11.3%
4. ASU - 11.1%
5. Utah - 7.1%
6. TCU - 4.7%
7. Cincinnati - 3.3%
8. Kansas - 1.9%
9. Houston - 1.7%

— WestCoastCFB (@WestCoastCFB) September 28, 2025

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With Dave's "best team since 2021", we aren't even in the conversation

This metric is dumb. Even discounting for Dave, BU has a 5%+ chance and a much greater shot than any of KU, Cincy, or Houston. All of those teams would already have 3 losses with our schedule.

Still should be much, much higher but unfortnately our coaching leaves a ton to be desired.

boognish_bear said:

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There are teams that recruit at around our level that are still inside the Top 25 in Scoring Defense. Obviously, having top-tier talent makes a huge difference...but scheme and coaching is part of the equation too.

4 BYU
5 Indiana
7 Maryland
8 TT (although their recruiting is probably a level above us now)
14 UH
18 Iowa St
19 Utah
21 UCF
23 Iowa
25 Arizona

105 Baylor

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This should be the featured post on this entire site. You couldn't be more right. Only Tech and Utah stand out as far as talent. Tech is literally the only one mentioned that is there for pure talent. They are typically not well coached but they bought some excellent individual, experienced players.

The rest are well coached teams and more than half have Less nil/resources.. some by a long shot. It was always a nonsense argument.

Utah, Iowa St, Houston, and BYU's defensive staff would have this team top 40 (top 50 at minimum) in defense. Our coahcing is terrible on that side of the ball.

Quinton said:

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This metric is dumb. Even discounting for Dave, BU has a 5%+ chance and a much greater shot than any of KU, Cincy, or Houston. All of those teams would already have 3 losses with our schedule.

Still should be much, much higher but unfortnately our coaching leaves a ton to be desired.

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I don't think we have the defense to compete for a Big 12 title this year, but FPI is an absolutely worthless metric. It's flawed beyond any usefulness.

Quinton said:

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boognish_bear said:

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There are teams that recruit at around our level that are still inside the Top 25 in Scoring Defense. Obviously, having top-tier talent makes a huge difference...but scheme and coaching is part of the equation too.

4 BYU
5 Indiana
7 Maryland
8 TT (although their recruiting is probably a level above us now)
14 UH
18 Iowa St
19 Utah
21 UCF
23 Iowa
25 Arizona

105 Baylor

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This should be the featured post on this entire site. You couldn't be more right. Only Tech and Utah stand out as far as talent. Tech is literally the only one mentioned that is there for pure talent. They are typically not well coached but they bought some excellent individual, experienced players.

The rest are well coached teams and more than half have Less nil/resources.. some by a long shot. It was always a nonsense argument.

Utah, Iowa St, Houston, and BYU's defensive staff would have this team top 40 (top 50 at minimum) in defense. Our coahcing is terrible on that side of the ball.

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True, it's unacceptable. But that doesn't portray the whole picture until end of season. A lot of those teams are going to sink in defensive rankings as conference play continues and they face higher scoring offenses

So you're saying Baylor will look better once they don't play offense titans like Auburn, ASU, and (checks notes) Samford?

Oldbear83 said:

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So you're saying Baylor will look better once they don't play offense titans like Auburn, ASU, and (checks notes) Samford?

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No, literally the opposite.

I'm saying the other teams with higher scoring defenses will come down to earth a little bit. You can rag on Auburn and SMU all you like, but those two teams are likely better than the vast majority of everyone else's OOC.

Oldbear83 said:

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So you're saying Baylor will look better once they don't play offense titans like Auburn, ASU, and (checks notes) Samford?

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No, literally the opposite.

I'm saying the other teams with higher scoring defenses will come down to earth a little bit. You can rag on Auburn and SMU all you like, but those two teams are likely better than the vast majority of everyone else's collective OOC.

bear2be2 said:

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Quinton said:

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This metric is dumb. Even discounting for Dave, BU has a 5%+ chance and a much greater shot than any of KU, Cincy, or Houston. All of those teams would already have 3 losses with our schedule.

Still should be much, much higher but unfortnately our coaching leaves a ton to be desired.

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I don't think we have the defense to compete for a Big 12 title this year, but FPI is an absolutely worthless metric. It's flawed beyond any usefulness.

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not the way it's looked so far overall, no. They will need to have an improvement something close to what the offense had last year from beginning to end of season, which basically means playing like they did against Arizona St. the rest of year.

The troubling part is that almost all of our transfer help for the run game is out for the season --- turner, Barnes, Jackson, and effectively it appears Samu, were lost for the season due to injury. Curious if Samu will redshirt. That was basically supposed to be our run defense right up the middle along with Keaton Thomas, who is playing with some kind of a cast on. Samu was paid to come in and develop into our run stopper right up the middle. The math is off right off the top with him not contributing b/c of spring injury and Adonis also not ready. Turner would have been mr. reliable to clean everything up---our most highly touted and probably highly paid player in secondary. Barnes was the top tackler and defensive player of the year in his league last year---must have cost a lot, so losing him is huge for run game. Jackson flashed great speed. Dave has just got to find a way to make these guys into a serviceable run defense. But even as bad as our defense has been at times this year, we would currently be favored in every game the rest of the way except at TCU and possibly utah at home or on road at cincinnati, which are probably darn near coin flips right now. Defense just needs to basically be more consistently what it was literally one week ago versus Arizona St. to give us a chance.

Auburn's defense is likely better than any Big12 team but their offense is a hot mess. Jackson Arnold gets sacked more than a potato.

Karab said:

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Quinton said:

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boognish_bear said:

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There are teams that recruit at around our level that are still inside the Top 25 in Scoring Defense. Obviously, having top-tier talent makes a huge difference...but scheme and coaching is part of the equation too.

4 BYU
5 Indiana
7 Maryland
8 TT (although their recruiting is probably a level above us now)
14 UH
18 Iowa St
19 Utah
21 UCF
23 Iowa
25 Arizona

105 Baylor

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This should be the featured post on this entire site. You couldn't be more right. Only Tech and Utah stand out as far as talent. Tech is literally the only one mentioned that is there for pure talent. They are typically not well coached but they bought some excellent individual, experienced players.

The rest are well coached teams and more than half have Less nil/resources.. some by a long shot. It was always a nonsense argument.

Utah, Iowa St, Houston, and BYU's defensive staff would have this team top 40 (top 50 at minimum) in defense. Our coahcing is terrible on that side of the ball.

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True, it's unacceptable. But that doesn't portray the whole picture until end of season. A lot of those teams are going to sink in defensive rankings as conference play continues and they face higher scoring offenses

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Very fair point, several of those big 12 teams will fall. I still see fundamental execution from many of those teams that I don't see from Dave's team.

boykin_spaniel said:

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Auburn's defense is likely better than any Big12 team but their offense is a hot mess. Jackson Arnold gets sacked more than a potato.

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It's funny. Five weeks later that game tells us two things we already knew -- our defense is bad and our passing game is awesome.

boykin_spaniel said:

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Auburn's defense is likely better than any Big12 team but their offense is a hot mess. Jackson Arnold gets sacked more than a potato.

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Sure, but Auburn's OL is also facing way better DLs than anything in our league.

That's where Scoring Defense doesn't tell the whole story. You can be in CUSA with a phenomenal scoring defense, but then you face Top 50 or even Top 25 opponents and that disappears quickly

True freshman running back Caden Knighten (Pauls Valley HS) showed out versus the Pokes in his return to his home state of Oklahoma:

🔥6 Touches
🔥81 Rushing Yards
🔥39 Receiving Yards#SicEm🐻 pic.twitter.com/74seoAWXJY

— Baylor Bears on SicEm365 (@SicEm365) September 29, 2025

Bryson Washington is second in the Big 12 in total rushing yards (492) and rushing touchdowns (5). He is averaging 98.4 yards per game and 5.3 yards per carry.

Washington totaled 77 yards and a touchdown on just 10 carries against Oklahoma State.#SicEm🐻 pic.twitter.com/HJVsnm4wiY

— Baylor Bears on SicEm365 (@SicEm365) September 30, 2025