Baylor’s Season Reaches a Turning Point Ahead of Road Test at No. 21 Cincinnati

From the outside looking in, frustration is the best word to describe the current state of the Baylor football program.

Patience is running thin amongst the fanbase with sixth-year head coach Dave Aranda, as his team has stumbled to a 4-3 record with arguably its most seasoned and talented roster across the last four years.

On the heels of what was bound to be a three-score loss to rival TCU in Fort Worth, until the chaotic final few minutes made it a six-point defeat to save face somewhat, the Bears are entering must-win territory as the season appears to be slipping away.

Instead of an easy get-right game, Baylor faces a big challenge this weekend with a road clash against No. 21 Cincinnati.

While Aranda’s weekly messages to the media about the team’s “care factor” have mostly fallen on deaf ears recently, it was a pleasant and welcome switch-up to also hear from quarterback Sawyer Robertson and wide receivers coach Dallas Baker at the podium this week.

“I taught these guys that if you live for their praises, you’ll die from their criticisms,” Baker said on Tuesday when addressing the frustrations so far this season. “The fans are going to do what they’re supposed to. They’re supposed to hold us to a standard. We can’t judge them for that. We have to do our jobs, and they have to do their jobs as fans.”

Baker, no stranger to hard work and winning, was a standout wideout at the University of Florida (2003-2006), helping guide the Gators to an SEC title and the 2007 BCS National Championship. As a senior, Baker earned First-Team All-SEC honors, totaling career highs in receptions (60), receiving yards (920) and touchdowns (10).

In his fourth year as Baylor’s wide receivers coach, he understands the frustrations with the current product on the field. Still, he believes the struggles the Bears have had this season are not for a lack of hard work but because of their own untimely mistakes, noting, “I don’t change according to wins or losses; I don’t think this program does either. Our record doesn’t show how hard these guys work. We make mistakes, but we make mistakes at the wrong moment of the game.”

He later added, “It’s raining, and we may give up a fumble on a quarterback-running back exchange. People from the outside don’t understand; they could say, ‘That’s because they didn’t practice hard.’ No, it’s because we weren’t on our details. These guys practice hard. The last two years since I’ve been here, the work they put in after practice, I never saw that in the first two years, to be honest. I probably shouldn’t say that, but you hear the claps back there. These dudes are working. There are guys outside working. We just have to be more on our details.”

Speaking of details, Robertson is looking to shake off the worst performance of his career, when he threw three interceptions, all in the fourth quarter, and was an inefficient 25-of-52 through the air against the Horned Frogs.

Afterward, the star signal caller said he was pressing and trying to make something out of nothing, instead of “letting the game come to him.”

It’s hard not to wonder if the pressure of Robertson needing to play perfect to make up for Baylor’s porous defense got to him, but he insists that isn’t the case, saying, “It’s tough, but I’m capable of doing it. That’s the expectation. I hold myself to that standard. I’ve done it before. We hurt ourselves. You’re not going to win a game that I throw three interceptions in. It’s as simple as that.” 

He went on to say, “It’s nothing that we can’t do. Our defense is out there playing hard as well. The other team is playing hard. You go through tough stuff, but it’s nothing that’s out of our capabilities because we’ve done it before. We’ve got to come together as a unit. It’s not really this Superman thing; we just have to execute. We know our team. We know what we have to do in order to win — how many points we have to score, how many points we have to hold the other team to. At the end of the day, the offense’s job is to score one more point than the other team.”

The load on Robertson’s shoulders has also expanded without a consistent ground game, as he’s averaging almost 10 more passes per game, compared to last season. Last year’s six-game win streak to close the regular season was sparked by a rushing attack where running backs Bryson Washington and Dawson Pendergrass combined for 1,242 yards, 14 touchdowns and 184 carries.

This year, however, Pendergrass was lost for the season in fall camp with a foot injury, and Washington hasn’t been the same player after suffering an undisclosed injury against Arizona State that has required him to wear some rib protection since. The offensive line can also hold part of the blame, as they didn’t make the leap that was expected of them.

As a combination of all of those factors, the Bears just aren’t getting many explosive running plays, which were a staple of the offense in the back half of last season. 

“We need it — every offense needs it,” Robertson said of big runs. “We got a glimpse of it there with Mike Turner. He sparked us a little bit. He hit the hole hard, and you saw that on one or two of those drives in the third quarter, where we scored 10 points, and that was because of those runs. Then you have the safeties come down, and you can throw it over the top. It opens up the playbook a little bit.”

What made the loss to TCU all the more frustrating was that the Bears were coming off a bye week and had 14 days to prepare for the Horned Frogs, yet still struggled with the things that have plagued them all year: slow starts, missed assignments and losing the turnover battle.

The defeat seemed to spark something inside the locker room with Robertson, saying, “You’re starting to see guys speak up a little more. It’s hard too because some of the mistakes were the same mistakes we made against SMU or Kansas State, but it’s overshadowed by the win because we had guys that played hero ball or Superman and were able to bail us out. In this game, we didn’t have that. Those mistakes are magnified, and they’ve been the same mistakes over and over again. You’re starting to see guys speak up and leaders step up, which is what this team needs.”

What’s so maddening about this team is that there will be glimpses here or there of what the Bears can be when they play complementary football, but they’re running out of opportunities to make it happen.

Robertson, however, is keeping the faith, saying this Saturday could be the first time this year where it all comes together, likening it to last year’s blowout win against Texas Tech in Lubbock, where the Bears entered the contest backed into a corner.

“That was a game where all three sides of the ball played together, and we played as a team. In a season, you’re going to do that probably two or three times,” he said. “Last year, it was against Tech and maybe the Kansas game, where all units played well, and the results were blowout victories. We haven’t done that at all this year. We’re still waiting on that, and we have another opportunity on Saturday to do that against a really, really good Cincinnati team, so hopefully, that’s the response we get.”

The Bears (4-3, 2-2) will travel to take on the No. 21 Cincinnati Bearcats (6-1, 4-0) at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 25, at Nippert Stadium. The game will be nationally televised on ESPN2.