Until proven otherwise, Matt Rhule is just calling progress like he sees it
Only the most optimistic predictions had Baylor back in a bowl game last fall after a Kansas-and-11 season in 2017. Not because the potential wasn’t there, but because any who would admit they saw that kind of jump were gunshy after what they witnessed in Matt Rhule’s first year on campus in Waco.
Following the winter grind, Baylor’s program is now coming up for a breath of air as Rhule enters his third spring and the discussion has turned to taking the program from being respectable to being great.
No one should pick up the microphone at the Green and Gold Game on April 13 and predict a 10-win season or a Big 12 Championship even if they truly believe it.
Rhule has made it clear that climbing the mountain that is college football to become good is only half of the battle.
“I want to make another jump from last year, it’s just a much harder jump. It’s not easy, but it’s a lot easier to go into a 1-win team or a 2-win team and get them to be respectable, to get them to be a good team,” Rhule said in his first spring press conference on Wednesday.
“It’s much harder to go from good to great and that’s because most of us are just happy being good. We spend a lot of time saying at least we aren’t as bad as we once were. It takes elite focus and it takes elite accountability to become a great football team, and that’s hard.”
Truthfully, who even remembers what Rhule said to kickoff spring practice back in 2018? Of course there was plenty of talk about being stronger and faster and bigger and quicker after winter workouts, but 365 days ago the phrase “trust the process” was still a punchline that most Baylor fans would not dare admit they actually believed.
An increase of six in the “W” column of the team record has that sponge of a phrase carrying a bit more water these days. “Bigger and stronger, faster and quicker” holds more edge as the consistentcy of the team improved greatly after Rhule spoke about about those improved attributes from March to August last year.
It’s 2019 and he’s once again identifying the improvement of the program like he sees it.
“I think we’re at the point now where we’re able to say that we’re across the board strong enough on the offensive and defensive lines,” Rhule said. “We had some seniors last year — Blake Blackmar, Pat Lawrence, Ira (Lewis), Greg (Roberts), Xavier (Jones) — who were really strong people, but the rest of the guys were freshmen and sophomores strength wise.”
“I think now when you come in and see our squat testing and see our bench press testing, we’ve always been very fast, but we have the size, the strength, the brawn, to go along with the speed that our team has now.”
The fans don’t consume much regarding the program other than what is filtered and fed via social media or when the athletic department graciously allows the media to watch a snippet of practice and report back what mostly untrained eyes have witnessed. So until something gives us a reason to not, trusting the word from a man who sees the ascension to the top of the mountain on a daily basis is as good of a source as any.
“I judge all of that on what I see day in and day out,” Rhule said. “The work ethic from the coaches — are the coaches walking around happy and satisfied with being a 7-win team or do we want to take another step? We certainly all do and the way to do it is just attack each and every day and I’ve been really pleased with the offseason program.”
Never forget that Baylor fans didn’t take him or his staff at their word back in 2017 when they bluntly stated their team wasn’t very good despite knowing that a vantage point from mostly coming from outside the program limited came from behind obstruction.
It’s only day one of spring ball, but a “good feeling” was never term used back then.
“There’s just a good feeling with some of the guys who have played a lot of football. We have a junior quarterback now. We have guys that have played — Clay Johnston and Blake Lynch — they’ve played a lot of football. They know what to do and what has to be done and allows us just to push them.”