All Clear: Baylor at full strength as team begins prep for TCU

There won’t be any Baylor players coming back from quarantine on Friday this week to hurriedly prep for a game against TCU on Saturday at McLane Stadium. This is a set of quite unfamiliar circumstances for the 2020 Bears, and unfortunately, something Dave Aranda’s squad hasn’t had the luxury of experiencing this season. 

In fact, for the first time this season, Baylor is entering a game week at full strength after Sunday tests cleared all players the roster. 

“We took our tests on Sunday, everyone's negative,” Aranda said on Monday. “We've got two more tests to go … Obviously, with these still two tests to take, but we're set to have everybody, which we haven't been in that situation.”

After an outbreak of of COVID-19 after a road trip to West Virginia back on Oct. 3, Baylor saw players return to practice almost daily last week during prep for their game at Texas. That included at least one starter who returned on Friday and started on Saturday after missing two weeks of reps.

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“There are guys that played in that game that we were able to get back on our team on Thursday and Friday and so they were having quarantine kind of walkthroughs, early in the morning, trying to get them prepared,”  Aranda told the media on Monday morning.

“I think the Tuesdays and the Wednesday practices the most hitting that we do the most team periods that we do the most involved.  When you get guys later in the week you have them, but it's walkthroughs, it's kind of teach tempos, it's in ballrooms of hotels and these things.”

The slow trickle of players returning to regular team activities last week—and really throughout the entire season—has kept Baylor from having regular and consistent practices to prepare for games. The lack of consistency has impacted Baylor’s game play, but also impacted the development time during an off week where the Bears were hoping to mesh before a nine-day shutdown prevented that from happening.

Between Oct. 3 and Baylor’s game in Austin, the Bears practiced just four times. 

The most noteworthy component of the off-the-field issues is that in three games this season, Baylor has seen three different starting offensive lines with at least four starters missing a game and at least one starter missing two games. Baylor was without starters Connor Galvin and Xavier Newman against Texas.

With two tests looming on Wednesday and Friday, Baylor is at full strength for now. If that remains the case, Aranda is excited about the week of work ahead of the team, specifically mid-week practices where the offensive line can get significant reps together as a unit.

“And then even more importantly than that, we're able to rep everybody throughout the week,” Aranda said. “We don't have everybody just for Saturday, where there's a guy on Thursday or Friday coming back, but we've got everybody from Tuesday on.”

“To get it to where they're working combos, and they're ID'ing the linebacker and coming off at the appropriate time, or they're working gap schemes, and they're making sure that they're getting movement on the down guy. All of those things, I think, to work and get cohesive. And these are our guys and here we go, I'm excited to see that.”