Baylor Bears 2006 Football Preview:
Gentle Ben or Grizzly?

By Big12-Fans Writer Brandon Reese

It seems like it’s moving along faster than usual. With basketball being a sport of good calls, bad calls and the performances in between, and baseball a shell of it’s former self with steroids falling out of favor among the game’s elite, college football is a year round sport. And believe it or not, we’re only twelve weeks out from the first week of the season. So with twelve teams to preview, I figured now was as good a time as ever to get started. Here’s the first installment.

Baylor
You look at a program like Baylor and it’s easy to like. If you’re not a fan of the Baptist Bears and you have a team in the Big 12, you like to see Baylor come to town. They haven’t been that ferocious grizzly Chritopher George could run in and save the young ladies from as much as a Gentle Ben seeking to add that extra victory to get bowl eligible. (By the way, if you get the Christopher George comment, please get outside. Soon. If you didn't, rent Grizzly. It's worth it to get the joke.)

Last year was the exception to the rule. Baylor hasn’t won the six games required for bowl eligibility since 1995. They waited until last year, the tenth year of the Big 12, to win a conference game on the road. Now, obviously someone has to occupy the lower intestine of the conference, but Baylor wanted none of it in 2005. They hoisted victory flags over early season North favorite Iowa State and eventual doormat Oklahoma State, and took Oklahoma and Texas A&M down to the wire. This is no longer Gentle Ben.

All that said, this is still, at best, the 5th team in the South. The road schedule is brutal sending them to Washington State, Colorado, Austin, Lubbock and Stillwater. If they can take two of them, they should be bowl eligible. In the world of the 12 game season though, there should be plenty of bowl eligible teams, so ‘eligible’ does not necessarily mean ‘qualifying’.

You have to give it to Guy Morriss, though. He’s a football guy through and through, and he’s not satisfied moving Baylor along for a few years just so he can move on to the next big job. When you overhaul the offense by bringing in Lee Hays, after his 10-2 mark as OC at West Texas A&M (the first 10 win season there since 1950), it’s obvious you’re about change for the long term—or so Baylor fans hope. I first heard about Hays when WTAMU was undefeated about seven games into the season. He embedded himself for a couple of summers at Texas Tech to learn Mike Leach’s ‘Grip It and Rip It’ just up the road in Lubbock. He’s at least a couple of years behind Leach, but it shouldn’t detract from the effectiveness of what he’s putting in out Waco way.

As far as different sides of the ball, I’ll start with what was Baylor’s best unit on the field last year, their punting team. Daniel Sepulveda is the 2004 Ray Guy award winner, and while he appears to be hurt at the moment, he should be ready to go by opening day. This dude flat out pops it when the Bears need him to, averaging around 51 yards per punt, and could put opposing offenses in the shadows of their own goalposts consistently. He’s a weapon, but punters do not win ball games. Offenses do.

There are two opinions on quarterbacks in this system. The first being anyone can do it and the second being you need not only a strong, accurate arm but a big muscle between the ears. In either case, Shawn Bell should fit the bill. Early reports are that he’s picking up the system pretty well, but don’t be surprised to see some committee work before the season’s done, should Bell not hold up his end of the bargain. Big, bruising running back Shawn Mosley returns with some competition from the more subtle Brandon Whitaker. The two provide an interesting one-two punch as Mosley can hammer inside and Whitaker can be the cut and crease man with the hands. WR Dominique Ziegler returns to lighten the load on Bell. He tossed a long looping ball for a touchdown in the spring game, adding a little bit of variety to what has in years been a less than interesting offense. Bell also has a more than qualified wideout in former QB Terrance Parks, but make no mistake; the season is in Bell’s hands. Sadly though, offenses do not win championships. Defenses do.

The Baylor faithful will hope that’s not the case. As defenses go, this one will be a total question mark, but if it can only hold up, the Bears will score. The defensive line hasn’t shown that it can hold water yet, and the linebacking corps is empty. The whole unit returns only four starters, with sharp tongued corner CJ Wilson the only prize in the group. Marcus Foreman is suitable at end, and they’ll find someone to fill the spots around him, but this is a glaring weakness.

What the Bears will learn, sooner than later sadly, is how this system works when it’s not working. It is rough on the defense. At best, three incompletions and a punt take twenty seconds off the clock. While the defense gets a momentary respite from the action, it’s easy to stack up four or five of those in a row against a team better than your own. As best as I can figure Baylor plays six teams that assuredly fall into that category, and eight that might. As a Texas Tech fan I can tell you: When this system isn’t working, it’s still quite capable of putting big numbers on the board, they just aren’t where they were supposed to be.

So does Baylor make a bowl? Not this year. I can see five wins with the possibility of a sixth if the defense mines some talent and the offense comes together quickly. Overall, the Bears are playing 12 scrimmage games in an effort to get this offense to gel and get some experience across the front seven of the defense.