Which Big 12 teams have championship skill talent?

On3 imageby:Ian Boyd03/22/22

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One of the hardest parts in projecting teams for the upcoming season is in anticipating which teams will have winning features to their offenses.

For instance, who would have predicted that the 2021 Big 12 Title game participant Oklahoma State and Baylor teams would be powered by Jaylen Warren (1,216 rushing yards, 11 touchdowns) and Abram Smith (1,601 yards, 12 touchdowns)?

In the case of Baylor, at least it was apparent the Bears intended to run the ball heavily in their new wide zone system and the questions were how well they’d do it and who’d get the highest volume of carries. Oklahoma State spent their offseason talking up the passing game with Spencer Sanders before defaulting to a zone run game with Jaylen Warren as the main focus of the offense. I’m not sure if the Cowboys even had the notion to orient their offense in that fashion until they had to against Boise State by default when their whole receiving corps was out. Mike Gundy probably realized in that moment that playing defense and running the air out of the ball was a better formula for controlling and winning games than riding the Spencer Sanders roller coaster.

The supporting cast has an awful lot to do with which players are positioned to control games, but ultimately matters still come down to playmaking talent when it comes to championships.

There are a few teams in particular who stand out as being realistic competitors who have established, top-line talent they’ll be building around.

The Texas Longhorns

Texas is loaded at the skill positions for 2022 to a degree we haven’t seen from Austin in a very long time. They found three or four legitimately good players last season between Bijan Robinson, Roschon Johnson (not really established until Bijan was injured), Xavier Worthy, and Jordan Whittington (injured during the season). All four are back for 2022 and joined by transfers Isaiah Neyor (44 catches for 878 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2021) and Jahleel Billingsley (17 catches for 256 yards and three touchdowns in 2021).

The last seasons in which they had this much skill talent to work into the roster would have to be 2018 (Lil’Jordan Humphrey emerged in the offseason to play off Collin Johnson) or 2019 (Devin Duvernay replaced Humphrey and running backs Keaontay Ingram and Roschon Johnson emerged).

This is more. The main difference is essentially in Texas finally recruiting 5-star level talents who played like 5-star talents early in their careers in Worthy and Bijan, so they consequently have eligibility remaining after realizing success. They had a fair amount of success building around the two of them a year ago, Worthy had 998 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns, Bijan had 1,127 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns.

An interesting feature to next year’s team will be how they incorporate the different weapons on the roster. They have a pair of strong-armed quarterbacks though in Quinn Ewers and Hudson Card and a potentially very strong interior O-line with senior Junior Angilau (6-foot-6, 320 pounds), junior Jake Majors (6-foot-3, 310 pounds), and (probably) big sophomore Hayden Conner (6-foot-5, 320 pounds) as the interior trio. It won’t be terribly difficult for Steve Sarkisian to draw up play-action involving Worthy or Neyor working against 1-on-1s against defenses who feel the need to drop a safety down in the run game.

All the pieces make sense together for Texas and there’s just an awful lot of firepower, more than anywhere else in the league.

The Kansas State Wildcats

This group reminds me of a classic Bill Snyder team in which they only have a couple of players they can feature on offense but the supporting cast is well built to do so.

Essentially everyone is back from last year save for the quarterback (Skylar Thompson) and tight end Daniel Immatorbhebhe. With Adrian Martinez transferring in, the former loss is considerably less than it would have been had the plan been to roll with Will Howard. Deuce Vaughn was a workhorse last year with 235 carries for 1,404 yards and 18 touchdowns along with 49 catches for 468 yards and four more touchdowns. Receivers Malik Knowles and Phillip Brooks are also returning.

An interesting offseason storyline has been the repositioning of 5-foot-10, 250-pound Jax “the destroyer” Dineen to running back with Deuce Vaughn. Ostensibly this is to give them the sort of short-yardage punch they didn’t have, say in the loss to Texas last year when the game was lost on several failed 3rd/4th-and-short scenarios.

I remember well though when Snyder’s playbook included some really nasty 11 personnel sets in which a fullback like Glenn Gronkowski or Braden Wilson was the sole running back paired with the quarterback while they spread the field with a tight end and three receivers. The quarterback run game from those sets was impossible. I’m betting Collin Klein remembers those days as well and as he’s now the offensive coordinator, my antenna is up for some of the Snyder-ball classics to re-emerge in their playbook.

Anyways, they have enough to build a passing game around Martinez, especially when paired with his running ability, and they still have Deuce Vaughn to get a heavy workload as well. Vaughn may be the only skill player on the team who terrifies anyone but there’s a chance Martinez the runner ends up being a fearsome second component to the offense, particularly situationally on third downs and in the red zone.

The Oklahoma State Cowboys

The Cowboys are technically losing their two main skill weapons from 2021, Jaylen Warren and Tay Martin, each of whom was very good. If you’re selling Mike Gundy’s ability to reload at the skill positions at OSU though…

At outside receiver Jaden Bray and Rashod Owens are probably your favorites to snag the main job left vacant by Tay Martin. They’re both pretty typical OSU star wideouts in profile, both check in around 6-foot-2 with Bray at 200 pounds and Owens 215 pounds. There’s also highly touted, early enrollee freshman Talyn Shettron and Bryson Green, lots of options.

Inside they return Brennan Presley in the slot along with Braydon Johnson, John Paul Richardson, and flex tight end Blaine Green. The next time the Cowboys don’t find a skill talent on their roster who’s been developed and is ready to star in a prominent role will be the first since early last decade. Look at their production from the top outside receivers of the last 10 years of the Gundy era:

YearTop outside receiverProduction
2021Tay Martin80 catches, 1,046 yards, 10 touchdowns
2020Tylan Wallace59 catches, 922 yards, 6 touchdowns
2019Tylan Wallace53 catches, 903 yards, 8 touchdowns
2018Tylan Wallace86 catches, 1,419 yards, 12 touchdowns
2017James Washington74 catches, 1,549 yards, 13 touchdowns
2016James Washington71 catches, 1,380 yards, 10 touchdowns
2015James Washington53 catches, 1,087 yards, 10 touchdowns
2014Brandon Shepherd39 catches, 737 yards, 5 touchdowns
2013Tracy Moore51 catches, 738 yards, 6 touchdowns
2012Charlie Moore35 catches, 542 yards, 6 touchdowns

Mike Yurcich became offensive coordinator in 2013 and not long afterwards the Cowboys were regularly featuring the outside X and Z receivers as they’d done in the past with Dez Bryant and Justin Blackmon. As you can see above, they’d often plug in a highly talented young guy and he’d give them multiple seasons to find the next guy. Martin was a one-year back stop between Tylan Wallace and the next great OSU outside receiver, who remains to be identified (at least by us).

Jaden Bray seems like the favorite, he was good with the ball in the air last year as a freshman and caught 13 for 240 and a pair of scores, including a combined four for 61 and a score in the Baylor title game and comeback win over Notre Dame. He also drew a number of PI flags on the Baylor cornerbacks. He has some nice burst, he can play the ball in the air, and he’s already shown a nose for the end zone.

At running back I’d bet on the youth movement, particularly Ollie Gordon of Euless Trinity. He’s already on campus, listed at 6-foot-1, 211 pounds, and he has some definite ability as a one-cut weapon in their zone running game. They have Dominic Richardson as quality assurance but I think Gordon will be the main guy and suspect he planned to enroll early in anticipation of exactly that.

There are questions about the Spencer Sanders era but they don’t revolve around whether he’s a boost to the OSU run game in the option or whether he can hit guys outside and down the field. OSU has the skill weapons to do what they need to do on offense in 2022, I think their questions are really elsewhere.

The West Virginia Mountaineers

Neal Brown’s team lost another defensive starter to the transfer portal recently, this time it was cornerback Nicktroy Fortune. The narrative around this team is becoming, “how come none of our players want to stay here? Is that why we don’t win?”

I think that narrative is completely off. West Virginia has lacked offensive infrastructure to translate a consistently good defense (regardless of who stays and goes) into a winning team. Their O-line hasn’t been there and their quarterback play definitely hasn’t been there.

The line should be quite good this year after blooding young linemen Doug Nester and Wyatt Milum last year and returning everyone else. Quarterback is a big question mark, we’ll see what Graham Harrell can make of Nicco Marchiol and their returning passers. The D is going to be just fine with Dante Stills and Akheem Mesidor back.

The weapons on this roster are finally, slowly getting back to where they were in the Dana Holgorsen era. Bryce Ford-Wheaton is still there after a pretty good 2021 he mostly spent demolishing cornerbacks on slant routes with his 6-foot-3, 220 pound frame. They also finally found another running back in Tony Mathis and then also added Clemson transfer Lynn-J Dixon, who obviously isn’t Travis Etienne but is likely to be a lot better than what West Virginia has had in the back-up slot in other seasons.

They’ve also got redshirt senior receiver Sam James back in the slot, which is potentially massive for his ability to run seamers and crossing patterns to occupy a safety and try to clear out the post or deep sideline for BFW. West Virginia has all the ingredients you want for the style of offense Neal Brown has wanted to run in the past, Harrell will probably change things up some which could either derail their progress or speed up their timeline of improvement.

Weapons aren’t going to be the issue for West Virginia next season.

Now there’s also a few teams who should be in the running for a Big 12 title but who I think might be missing a few pieces unless they have productive offseasons sorting through their rosters.

The Oklahoma Sooners

Oklahoma definitely has a few players who are going to thrive in the new offensive system. Namely Marvin Mims, who should find the “vertical or not” dimensions to Jeff Lebby’s veer and shoot offense to be highly conducive to his ability to get down the field and bring in contested catches.

Theo Wease might translate in the new offense but I never saw him do much damage in the past running streaks so I have some doubts. The rest of the receiving corps is talented but includes other questions marks. Billy Bowman might factor in here and give them a boost, we’ll have to see.

I think an equally big concern is the run game. Brayden Willis isn’t a typical veer and shoot run blocker to the point where I’m less confident that Oklahoma commentators he’ll even win the job, pending how Daniel Parker looks as a blocker. The design of this system is to create open alleys with the wide receiver splits and then blast the ball off tackle 40x a game with two-back, power run schemes. Neither Eric Gray nor Marcus Major have looked particularly imposing here in the past, although perhaps some of Baylor’s running backs of the Art Briles era wouldn’t have looked so great outside of the system either. I do think there are questions on the extent to which this offensive line and backfield are going to be particularly imposing in the Big 12 next season, especially with the advent of flyover defenses which are designed to maintain defenders in the alley without giving away easy 1-on-1 shots to Wease or Mims.

Oklahoma essentially needs their O-line to be really imposing next season, which is definitely possible but not a bankable feature at this point. The portal-depleted skill lineup isn’t intimidating like it has been.

The Baylor Bears

I think Baylor’s weapons arsenal is maybe a little less concerning than for the Sooners but there are definitely question marks. Traditionally wide zone teams with established O-line play don’t have running back problems, so the losses of Abram Smith and Trestan Ebner shouldn’t be too bad. It’s hard to believe they’ll be just fine replacing Smith’s hard running, which was so impactful last year, but believing a wide zone team was dependent on the abilities of their running back rather than their line is a trap commentators have been falling into since the 90s.

I don’t know who’s next at running back for Baylor but a savvy observer has to assume whomever goes right off tackle behind Khalil Keith will end up looking pretty good.

The real question is at receiver. Tyquan Thornton was an underutilized force at Baylor because they haven’t had quarterbacks who could push the ball down the field since Charlie Brewer got used up by Matt Rhule during the 2019 season. Thornton’s gone now and there isn’t another 4.2 40 deep threat on the roster waiting to replace him. They’ve got transfer Hal Presley as the most likely guy to end up as the main target and he’ll have a run game work off of, but we don’t really know what he’s capable of or if they’ll saddle him with Gerry Bohanon or hand the reins to Blake Shapen.

Baylor will continue to run on teams and convert third and fourth downs with their aggressive play-calling but they might lose some margin without the explosiveness in the passing game. Bohanon had a remarkable 8.0 ypa and 18 touchdowns to seven interceptions last year in large part because Thornton turned 62 catches into 948 yards and 10 touchdowns. Without a deep threat dimension to their play-action game, does this offense become much more plodding? It certainly wouldn’t be surprising.

The Iowa State Cyclones

The narrative on the Cyclones regards them losing Breece Hall, Charlie Kolar, Chase Allen, and Brock “pump fake” Purdy. It’s an obvious concern, I’m not handwaving the problem of replacing a back of Hall’s caliber although when he took over the question was whether they’d collapse without David Montgomery.

Here’s what I see with Iowa State though:

  • Xavier Hutchinson: 83 catches for 987 yards and five touchdowns.
  • Jaylin Noel: 38 catches for 265 yards.

Noel stood out in the bowl game in particular, he’s got some Deshaunte Jones to his game and should be able to have a lot of production working in their shallow crossing routes. I’m expecting he’ll go to work in the slot, Hutch will remain outside, and then they’ll find another receiver from a healthier Sean Shaw, freshman Greg Gaines, or perhaps speedy Colorado transfer Dimitri Stanley.

When you have two established receivers (Noel is somewhat established) who fit your system, you can really go to town on college defenses and the Cyclones appear to have that. The run game is not going to be an issue with Jirehl Brock, bludgeon-back Jared Rus, and all of those O-line starters returning. If Brock isn’t the guy than one of the younger dudes must have emerged, there’s a fair amount of talent in the running back room still which was overshadowed by Hall’s NFL abilities.

The question for Iowa State, like almost always, is whether they’ll have much explosiveness. I’m not sure if anyone in their skill lineup will be a big threat to score from between the 20s like Hall. They should be a better offense than their detractors anticipate, but if you take away Hall’s breakaway runs without adding back a deep threat receiver then it’s hard to see a Big 12 title game participant here. Hutch and Noel could simultaneously be a menace to opponents running routes at or under the sticks, but are both also liable to be inefficient in terms of putting points on the board with quick-strike drives.

The Big 12 isn’t dominated by teams with overpowering skill weapons and firepower like it used to be and Oklahoma is now phasing out of their Lincoln Riley era of dominance in which they were the most imposing offense every season. The only team who appears poised to win in that fashion is the Longhorns.

Can Texas win the Big 12 in 2022 with firepower or will a different formula for Championships become the model for the league? Discuss for free on the Flyover Football board!

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