Perfect match: One season working w/ Fedora a reward for Brewer as he closes Baylor career

Charlie Brewer will enter the 2020 season with a 19-20 overall record as a Bear. Of those 39 total games, Brewer has started 30 with a mark of 18-12. It’s not the most glorious of winning percentages, but there is more substance to it once you examine the details behind it.

After winning one game in 2017, Brewer led Baylor back to a bowl game in 2018 before progressing significantly in 2019, when the Bears were one win away from a 12-0 regular season—and an overtime loss away from the third Big 12 Championship in program history.

On an individual level, Brewer is nipping at the heels of Robert Griffin III on Baylor’s career passing charts, with a chance to claim the top spot in multiple categories. 

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Charlie Brewer has thrown for 7,742 yards and 51 touchdowns in 35 career games for Baylor.

That’s a heckuva career resume for most quarterbacks, but Brewer feels like there’s still a lot on the table. Of course, anyone who knows Brewer—who holds the national high school record for completion percentage—isn’t surprised that he feels there’s more to accomplish. Simply put, it’s in his make up. It’s what makes him so great.

Brewer’s 38.3 combined rushing and passing attempts in 2019 placed him behind a number of the top quarterbacks in the country including Sam Ehlinger (Texas), Brock Purdy (Iowa State), Kellen Mond (Texas A&M), Shane Buechele (SMU), Jalen Hurts (Oklahoma) and Joe Burrow (LSU). Those six averaged north of 40 attempts per game. 

Still, it’s not all about the stats for Brewer, who has seen the highs of a trip to the Big 12 Championship game and the lows of a one-win season. The program is built on a solid foundation.

“I definitely think that entering into my senior year, the program is in a great place right now,” Brewer said. “I think we've established a winning culture here and I'm really excited to continue that this fall.

“You know, going into my last year, I'm excited. I know that we’ve got a really good offense this year and I'm ready to put it on display.”

Pleased as he is with Baylor’s progress, it’s been a few years since Brewer has been in an offense that truly embraced his strengths—an offense where the “reins” were loosened, allowing him to play open and free.

Last fall Baylor’s offense existed at it’s basic form until it was needed. Leaning on the best defense in the Big 12, former head coach Matt Rhule and Jeff Nixon rarely pushed the issue on offense and rarely got the offense into high gear.

When they did, however, the offense executed well. A large part of that was possible because of Brewer’s ability to make plays in the clutch and lead his team when they seemed dead to rights. Things have changed in Waco over the last eight months, however, specifically with the offensive staff and the philosophical approach to the game. 

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Baylor’s offensive scheme under Rhule forced Brewer to keep the ball a bit longer than what you typically see in this era of college football. He was sacked at a dreadful rate in each of the previous three seasons because of it and the potential for collecting the video game numbers were non-existent. 

The shift of the offense under Dave Aranda and new offensive coordinator Larry Fedora reminds Brewer of his days at Lake Travis High School, where he led the Cavaliers to a 15-1 record and a state championship. Brewer threw for 3,923 yards and 54 touchdowns on 77.2% passing, a national record. He also rushed for 746 yards and nine scores.

In three years of high school varsity football, Brewer completed 70.5% of his passes for 8,363 yards and 107 touchdowns while rushing for 1,442 yards and 19 scores.

“I think there's a lot of similarities from this offense and when I played in high school,” Brewer said. “We're going to play with a lot of tempo. We're gonna play fast.”

An area where Baylor executed at an elite level in 2019 was explosive plays. Whether it was running or passing, the majority of the offensive production came in the form of explosive plays. In 14 games, 8.54% (81/948) of Baylor’s plays went for at least 20 yards. The Bears’ 81 total plays of 20-plus yards was good enough for for 13^th nationally. 

With a plethora of talented offensive play makers returning around him, the game plan will be to get the ball out of his hands, but it should also lead to the same chunks of yards.  

“We're still gonna establish a run game as well as take a lot of shots on the field,” Brewer said. “So I think you're gonna see some fast tempo and a lot of big plays, whether that's a long run after tempo, or a shot down the field. We got the guys to do it and I think we've got the system that's going to allow us to do that.”

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Baylor OC Larry Fedora with quarterbacks Gerry Bohanon (11) and Charlie Brewer (12).

Aranda has noticed the correlating swagger between Brewer and Fedora from afar, something he classifies as key to having success on offense. Fedora, however, is only now beginning to see the type of leadership characteristics Brewer possesses as the two are on the field together for the first time in recent weeks.

“What I've noticed from Charlie, he’s a heck of a leader,” Fedora said. “He cares about his team and cares about his teammates. He does not want let anybody down and he wants to work extremely hard.”

Brewer isn’t a yeller or a screamer, but the respect he demands from his teammates and his position group by his actions on the field are real. With a handful or more of game-tying or game-winning drives in his career, that’s no surprise.

His teammates trust him in the clutch of a game. Now they will need to trust him in a different kind of clutch: prepping for a season without a spring period and in less than ideal circumstances forced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That's the kind of guy you'd want to have when especially this situation, when you're trying to put in a new offense without time on the field and everything else,” Fedora said.

Brewer and Fedora—who admittedly hasn’t watched film of the previous offensive system—will need to piece together the best system for the personnel in Waco in a short amount of time. 

Brewer is all in.

“He wants to know everything about what we're doing,” Fedora said. “He wants to know why, he wants to know the ins and outs. He is concerned about every detail of what we're doing and why we're doing it and what other guys are doing within the concept.”

Fedora has had considerable success with quarterbacks over the years as an offensive coordinator and head coach, including most-recent and most-recognized pupil Mitch Trubisky, the No. 2-overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft following a terrific career at North Carolina. 

Fedora’s focus is now on grooming Brewer into the best senior quarterback possible. 

“He’s helped me a lot,” Brewer said. “He's been really helpful on different keys and little points in order to pick up the offense a little quicker. I think it's been really smooth all the way through.”

The relationship has been built on the fly, but the pairing seems to be a perfect fit thus far.