Empathizing with Baylor fans

[alUmnUs]

I watched every minute of Baylor’s loss to Texas State and I was left pretty shocked by Baylor’s performance. They looked overmatched and uninspired (seemed like Aranda was MIA).

I remember how frustrated I was during the outset of the 2021 season. After losses to BYU and SDSU (maybe the former Baylor QB was the curse all along), I swore up and down that Utah had fielded the worst O-Line I’d seen in almost 30 years and that a losing season was imminent. Well we all know how that story ended.

I’m wondering if Baylor is in a similar situation? I have to think a lot of their fans feel the way I did back in ’21. I’m trying not to jinx the mojo by feeling over confident about Saturday, but man, Baylor looked so soft and disheveled along both lines. Even if they were to turn things around, that would seem like an in-conferemce play project to me and not a 1-week turn around kind of deal.

We’ve all seen examples of back up QBs looking like all-stars against Utah, but Utah defense v.2023 looks nasty. They physically dominated Florida and really hit the s**t out of Mertz and his receivers. Baylors d-line is vastly undersized against the Utah OL and they were getting absolutely bullied by TS. Though I’m trying to epathize based on recent memory of the ’21 season, I just don’t see Baylor flipping a switch in a week. That team seems like a project.

Also the Baylor crowd sounded like a bore (I heard weird lite fm 100 music being played during breaks) and I don’t think their fans will show up and fill that 45k seat stadium on Saturday.

[LetItRide]

Watched the game recap on YT. Their tall QB reminds me of Herbert OU.
Was player of the year in Texas. Their skilled positions are pretty solid as well.
Agree the trenches is where they lack but if we cough up some TOS and give them confidence it could spell doom for the Utes.
Think the AZ game at AZ couple years ago. We barely got out of there alive.

Whitt knows this game is closer than it seems. Our road history isn’t the greatest.

Win in the trenches and win the TO battle and we should be good.

Utes 33-27. Our run game takes over.

[22Ute22]

No way they score 27 on us, even at home. They scored 31 against Texas State at home and we have a way better defense than that. I say we win 31-10.

[krindor]

It was a bad Baylor game for sure… but given our road struggles, the general weirdness of opening games and the invigorating nature of a new QB, they’re absolutely still a threat. Like you said, it reminds you of Utah 2021…which turned out pretty good for us.

Here’s some cases of P5 teams losing to a FCS or G5 school in their opener over the last 5 (non-COVID) years

• 2017 Oregon St (lost to Colo St 27-58): finished 1-11
• 2017 Baylor (lost to Liberty 45-48): finished 1-11
• 2018 UCLA (lost to Cincy 17-26): finished 3-9
• 2018 Kansas (lost to Nicholls St 23-26): finished 3-9
• 2019 Arizona (lost to Hawaii 38-45): finished 4-8
• 2019 UCLA (lost to Cincinnati 14-24): finished 4-8
• 2019 Tennessee (lost to Georgia St 30-38): finished 8-5
• 2019 Ole Miss (lost to Memphis 10-15): finished 4-8
• 2019 Missouri (lost to Wyoming 31-37): finished 6-6
• 2021 Duke (lost to Charlotte 28-31): finished 3-9
• 2021 Washington (lost to Montana 7-13): finished 4-8
• 2021 Georgia Tech (lost to Northern Illinois 21-22): finished 3-9
• 2021 Illinois (lost to UTSA 30-37): finished 5-7
• 2021 Washington St (lost to Utah St 23-26): finished 7-6
• 2022 Virginia Tech (lost to Old Dominion 17-20): finished 3-8

Obviously that list isn’t exactly reassuring to Baylor – most of those teams went on to have horrible seasons…but a few of them (2021 Wazzu, 2019 Missouri, 2019 Tennessee) finished bowl-eligible and 2019 Tennessee even ended up with a decent season.

More importantly every single one of those teams (besides 2017 Oregon St) beat at least 1 P5 team. 2022 Virginia Tech and 2017 Baylor were the only others to not have 2+ P5 victories. Just because they had embarrassing losses to bad teams doesn’t mean they weren’t later a threat to better teams with more resources.

Last year Arizona St didn’t beat anyone besides FCS Northern Arizona, absolutely abysmal 1-11 Colorado… and somehow also an 11-2 Washington team than finished #8 in the county

[RoboUte]

I have no doubt that Baylor will improve week over week but I would call out two things in comparing them to the 2021 utes.

1. That team improved massively, way more than you can ever reasonably expect.

2. That improvement took time. We didn’t even show signs of life until week 3, which was still a losing effort to a team we should almost never lose to. The team was not comfortable until October and still improved thereafter.

[EagleMountainUte]

Whitt seems to be well aware of this fact many of his comments reflect that feeling that Baylor could certainly be on the rise after that defeat. Utah had a huge win as well so getting ahead of your self is something they can’t do.

[22Ute22]

I don’t think Baylor is 2021 Utah. Their starting QB Shapen was actually one of the few bright spots in the entire game, and he got hurt. Their backup QB definitely looks worse too. One thing to note is that 2021 SDSU was actually a very good G5 team. They went 12-2 and had a good front 7 if I recall correctly. Time will tell on Texas State, as they look damn good, but they were also picked to finish in the bottom half of their conference. Even if Baylor does improve, it won’t happen over the course of a week. 2021 Utah didn’t really look like a competent team until after the Bye week, and even then, our special teams lost us the game against Oregon state. Baylor won’t improve that much over 1 week. Utah will win by 3 scores.