Peering through the Hubble: The Big 12's space matchups in Week 11
Lest anyone think the path to the Big 12 title is straightforward for any team aside from Oklahoma, last week was a nice wake up call.
No, Baylor isn’t safely enough ahead of the rest of the Big 12 to survive a lackluster showing in Fort Worth. Oklahoma State may not be either when they take on Chandler Morris. Perhaps even Oklahoma isn’t going to look so inevitable when they play the Bears, Cyclones, and Cowboys back to back.
The final stretch is about to begin.
Oklahoma (-5.5) at Baylor
The Baylor Bears have some issues on defense.
Against Texas they quietly gave up several wide open shots, some of which Texas hit, some of which Texas dropped, and some of which Texas didn’t even see. Fairly bizarre given the relative simplicity of Dave Aranda’s coverage schemes this year (quarters or a single-high match scheme), but when you’re constantly disguising and bringing late blitzers things can slip behind them, I suppose.
There was some of that against TCU and then also some other stuff.
The Frogs ran the Johnny Manziel Air Raid in this game against Aranda’s zone-blitzing scheme and completely took it apart.
Here’s a few examples.
You can see Baylor check late against motion to bring the remaining inside-backer on the edge blitz so the other guy can cover the swing, but no one drops to the second level. No one at all. Quarterback run RPOs are death for a blitzing defense because you can run out of defenders to account for him.
Everyone ends up matching a route and no one matches the quarterback.
Additionally…
These spread formations are also tough on really any variety of nickel defense. They’ll spread you wide and force the linebackers to be a part of the coverage scheme, which will generally force you to help them. Do that, and they can get 1-on-1 matchups for the outside receivers they wanted to throw to all along.
Again, quarterback run dimensions just become icing on the cake.
Here’s the deal against Oklahoma, Caleb Williams can do a lot of this too and Lincoln Riley definitely knows how to draw it up. The Sooners also won’t run up a bill of 113 penalty yards, nor miss field goals.
Baylor can play better on defense. They might figure out how to commit fewer busts (leaving gaps and receivers uncovered on blitzes every week) but they still have some inherent problems.
Namely, they don’t have a space force on defense. They have to blitz Jalen Pitre and the linebackers to pressure the quarterback, there’s no good edge rusher to guarantee a base pass-rush when they just play a base defense. Back in the secondary, there’s no lockdown cornerback who can be trusted to hold up without safety help. Both of these will matter against Oklahoma and if/when the Sooners unveil their own spread concepts with Caleb Williams I foresee issues.
Then there’s the other side. TCU showed mad disrespect to the Baylor passing game and routinely loaded the box aggressively.
Abram Smith still turned 18 carries into 125 yards because the Bears have a fantastic run game this season, but Gerry Bohanon couldn’t deal the blows they needed to win. He was 14-20 for 214 yards with three touchdowns and two picks, which sounds pretty good, but those picks came when Baylor was fighting to win and they left other opportunities on the field. Much like Texas did against Baylor the week prior.
Oklahoma is going to man up the Baylor wideouts and play very aggressively with a now much healthier secondary. On top of all that, Riley and his staff are coming off a bye week.
I don’t like this game for the Bears.
West Virginia at Kansas State (-6.5)
The Mountaineers seem to seesaw between competence and futility from week to week. It wasn’t particularly shocking for Jim Knowles’ Oklahoma State defense to draw the bad out of Jarrett Doege and their offense, but they sure fell flat.
Kansas State is less likely to be able to resist the power run game which underpins West Virginia’s offense when they have it working. When they can run split/tight zone plays downhill on opponents, pick up chain-moving gains, and suck in defenders to create easy RPO and play-action opportunities for Doege then they’re at their best.
That’s a tough deal against the OSU defensive front, which has several big and legitimately good D-linemen along with a variety of blitzes from a very good linebacker corps. There’s a much better way to get after OSU we’ll get to later, but the West Virginia approach probably finds more purchase against K-State.
But in a close game, K-State has more ways to get the ball to Deuce Vaughn this season and Skyler Thompson is a much better field general than Doege. The Wildcats are also 6-3 overall and still mathematically alive in the title race, so they have a lot to play for. A 10-win season would not be an insignificant achievement.
Iowa State (-10.5) at Texas Tech
Definitely some trap game dimensions to this contest. Iowa State has Oklahoma the week after this one but they can’t afford to drop a game and consequently, probably won’t.
I hate the Texas Tech run defense in this contest trying to handle the Iowa State run game from multiple personnel packages. Particularly with all the distractions of getting a new regime.
In other news, I’m curious to see how McGuire’s staff shakes out. I’ve heard things which make me think my guess about them using a 3-down defensive scheme will be accurate, I’ve also heard some things which make me worry a little about McGuire’s ability or willingness to hire outside of his relatively narrow network.
Being able to hire staffers you haven’t worked with before and integrate them into your program is a super power. It’s probably the no. 1 factor for whether a head coach is successful in a big job and Nick Saban’s ability to do this is why Alabama has been on top for so long.
Kansas at Texas (-30.5)
Massive spread, everyone seems to be assuming Texas will go out and take it all out on the Jayhawks.
If you consider the Jayhawks’ relative quality compared to say, Rice or Texas Tech whom Texas crushed, it would seem likely a beating is coming here. Additionally, Kansas has played terrible run defense this season which is just what the doctor ordered for a Texas team who’s missing their no. 2 and no. 3 receivers (injury, portal) at this point in the year.
30.5 is a lot though, we’ll see how Texas responds to the “rally the flag” moment which occurred after the apparent Bo Davis (D-line coach) rant on the bus back from Iowa State. If they play with pride and physicality in the run game and on run defense, 30.5 should be fine.
If they’re not the offense they were earlier in the season and the defense isn’t ready for the zone-option run game? 30.5 would really be optimistic.
Watch Xavier Worthy against a solid young Kansas cornerback trio in this game, that’s where the margin would need to come for Texas.
TCU at Oklahoma State (-13)
To me this is the most interesting game, barring Baylor solving a lot of their issues and avoiding getting mauled by Caleb Williams and Lincoln Riley.
Oklahoma State has been playing outstanding defense this year while primarily facing teams who’s offensive strategy this season has been oriented around running the football with a star running back. The closest you’d come to an exception to this rule would be the Iowa State game, where Brock “pump fake” Purdy diced them up in a Cyclone victory.
How are they going to fare against Chandler Morris and the Air Raid?
Quentin Johnston is a big matchup problem for the ‘Pokes. Baylor tended to keep a safety on him, which lead to openings elsewhere Morris proved he could take advantage of in the passing game. The Cowboys have some big safeties that do their best work coming downhill, which isn’t how it works against the Air Raid. They’ll try and confuse Morris but it’s a tough gig when the offense is in 3×1 or 4×1 half the time and you can’t really disguise as much with regards to who’s covering whom.
Oklahoma State does have pass-rushers though, this is where their chief hope of a big win lies. Perhaps they can get to Morris more often than Baylor did and consequently avoid some of the big hits, especially of the off-schedule playmaking when Morris was able to run away from the big, slow Bear D-line.
On the other side, TCU finally has Noah Daniels and Kee’yon Stewart back and involved at cornerback. Pretty beneficial for a team which HAS to load the box to have a prayer of stopping the run and is facing an offense which doesn’t want their quarterback determining games with his decision-making anymore than Baylor does.
Given the adjustments TCU has made, or made against Baylor at least, I don’t think Oklahoma State is safe from a potential trap. They’ll at least see it coming, where it doesn’t appear Baylor did, but it’s tough to deal with a guy like Morris in such a system surrounded by speed.
What do you make of TCU’s late surge with Chandler Morris? Discuss for free on the Flyover Football board!
