Five Questions – Baylor

 

By Steve Habel/Senior Editor

Sometimes the difference between winning and losing football games comes down to understanding your team’s limitations and taking advantage of the chances you’re given.

That was the formula used — and used well — by Texas to upset 12th-ranked Baylor 23-17 on Saturday at McLane Stadium in both teams’ regular-season finale.

The Bears, bloodied but unbowed, will head to their sixth consecutive bowl game. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] The Longhorns, on the other hand, will bus back to Austin and stay there, as everyone around the team tries to figure out how a squad that can beat two of the nation’s best  (Oklahoma and Baylor) couldn’t win enough games to qualify for the postseason.

“I’m still scratching my head about that, too,” head coach Charlie Strong said after the game. “It’s all about attitude, preparation and maturity. We weren’t able to bring the same level of intensity to each game and I don’t know why.”

In this win, the Longhorns (5-7) built an early lead on the foundation of Baylor’s mistakes and the injury to the Bears’ starting quarterback. Texas then played well enough in the final moments to walk out of Baylor’s opulent new home with its first win in the series since 2012.

The stat sheet shows that Baylor, playing with the third-string quarterback as the starter and then with a wide receiver or running back behind center after the quarterback was injured, outgained Texas 479-307, with 395 of the Bears’ yards coming on the ground. But the Bears also had four turnovers (the Longhorns had none) and were just 6-of-21 on third and fourth down conversions.

Texas’ defense set the tone for the game on Baylor’s opening possession, stopping the Bears on a 4th-down and 1 play at the Texas 30. The Longhorns took just three plays to move into the lead as quarterback Tyrone Swoopes found Caleb Bluiett behind the Baylor defense. The defensive end-turned-tight end rumbled down the right 57 yards for a touchdown.

The Longhorns used an 11-play, 61-yard drive on its ensuing possession to produce a 23-yard field goal by Nick Rose, giving Texas a 10-0 advantage. The points were nice but the Longhorns could’ve had more — Swoopes’ third-down pass in the end zone to John Burt went right through the receiver’s hands.

Later in the quarter Texas freshman safety P.J. Locke hammered Baylor quarterback Chris Johnson during an option run and forced a fumble that, after a scrum in the pile, was claimed by the Longhorns’ Anthony Wheeler at the Baylor 33.

An unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Baylor gave Texas the ball at the Baylor 18, and three plays later Swoopes rolled through the Bears’ defense for a 9-yard touchdown run. After Rose’s PAT kick pushed the Texas lead to 17-0 and, with Johnson knocked out of action by Locke’s hit, the game was there for Longhorns’ taking.

Texas added to its lead with a 53-yard Rose field goal with 2:01 to play in the half while Baylor kicker Chis Callahan missed twice, from 40 and 53 yards, respectively, allowing the Longhorns to take a 20-0 lead to halftime.

Baylor was completely out of sync in the first half but still had more total yards than Texas (205-190), more rushing yards (163-97) and more plays (46-37). The difference, however, was that the Bears had three turnovers while Texas had none.

“We knew the situation with the offense and at halftime the defense knew it was up to us to get them good field position,” Baylor defensive end Jamal Palmer said. “We tried to come together but we just came up a little short.”

The first half belonged to the Longhorns, but Baylor owned the third quarter. The Bears, in a brilliant move by coach Art Briles because he didn’t have a genuine quarterback, went to the Wildcat formation. The move allowed the Bears to move 69 yards in eight plays (all runs) to a 20-yard touchdown by Johnny Jefferson that cut the Texas lead to 20-7 with 10:27 to play in the quarter.

On Baylor’s next possession, the Bears mixed things up bit and took 18 plays to drive 82 yards to a 24-yard field goal by Callahan at the 2:47 mark of the third quarter. The Texas lead was down to 20-10 and, suddenly (and perhaps predictably) the Bears were the ones that had the momentum and the control of the game.

The Bears stopped Texas on fourth-down and 1 at the Baylor 39 early in the fourth quarter and took over with the short field and all the mojo. Lynx Hawthorne, the Bears’ wide receiver-turned-quarterback, directed Baylor to a nine-play, 61-yard drive that culminated in his rollout keeper and 8-yard touchdown with 9:40 to play.

Just like that, Baylor had cut the Texas lead to 20-17 and it looked like the Longhorns — who had everything going their way in the first half — were going to cough up the bit.

But the Longhorns did just enough down the stretch to hold on. They added to their lead with a 37-yard Rose field goal with 3:59 to play that eliminated the chance of overtime — something Texas wanted no part of — and forcing Baylor score a touchdown to win.

After Rose’s kick, the Bears had two chances to drive to the win. The first ended when Texas’ Poona Ford stripped the ball from Jefferson and fell on it at the Baylor 43. The second started with the Bears on their own 4-yard line with no time outs, and ended on the turf near the Longhorns’ end zone after DeShon Elliott knocked down the pass on the game’s final play.

“Our guys will be pumped up from this game and it will be motivation for next season,” running back Johnathan Gray said after playing his final collegiate game. “They play hard and they’re going to be hungry. You can tell that the younger players have developed football awareness and are maturing.”

 

1. What spurred the Longhorns’ quick start?

Strong has preached all season about the need for his team to get off to a good start when on the road and he finally got his wish against Baylor.

The impetus? The Bears got their Texas counterparts all riled up with some “mess” talk before the game that spilled over to the field after the kickoff.

“We heard them talking ‘mess’ during warmups, but that’s normal for them — we heard that stuff last year, too,” wide receiver Daje Johnson said. “Some of the younger guys hadn’t been through that yet and it got them fired up.”

“Baylor did the same thing when we were playing them last year,” Paul Boyette, Jr. said about the pregame chatter. “Like Coach Strong said, guys at Baylor wanted to be recruited by Texas. There’s always going to be a rivalry.”

The situation came to a head late in the first quarter when Hawthorne ran down Texas defensive back Duke Thomas after Thomas had intercepted him and body slammed him to the ground right in front of the Longhorns’ bench. The Texas players came off the bench to congratulate Thomas and Hawthorne was caught up in the pile and accidentally kneed in the back by Texas reserve safety Kevin Vaccaro.

When Baylor saw all the commotion on the opposite sideline, most of the Bears headed across the field to protect their teammate and a shoving match ensued.

Strong said his players will “never back down” in such a situation and they didn’t Saturday — in fact, the bad blood worked for the Longhorns.

 

2. What play made the biggest difference against the Bears?

The nod goes to Locke’s tackle and hard hit on Baylor quarterback Johnson that knocked the Bears’ only remaining legitimate quarterback out of the game.

Johnson’s injury (announced as a concussion) forced Baylor to change its’s game plan but it took Briles and his staff until after halftime to get the new attack plan into place.

Briles said his team didn’t panic when Johnson went down.

“I don’t know if panic is the right word — it was a regrouping atmosphere and [a change in] attitude,” he said. “You’re ready for that, but when it happens, you’re really not. Then the realization set in that the game plan is, essentially, out of the window.

“We had a play or two that could’ve worked, but due to consequences, not everyone was on the same page.”

 

3. Did Texas get too conservative with its offense in the second half?

Yes. Offensive coordinator Jay Norvell said afterward that the coaches felt they had to “play the best cards in our hand,” or coach-speak for, “we’re not going to beat ourselves.”

“The Baylor defense dictated what we could do as much as the plays we called did,” Norvell said. “Did we get conservative? Yes, but sometimes you have to do that in football.”

The Longhorns gained just 117 yards on 26 snaps after halftime — 65 of those on the fourth-quarter drive that ended in Rose’s final field goal.

“We were conservative by design,” said Swoopes, who finished with 151 yards passing and 52 yards on the ground, amassing more than two-thirds of the Longhorns’ offensive total. “We had a big lead and we wanted to keep the ball on the ground and run as much of the clock as we could.”

 

4. Did Chris Warren’s performance set him up for a big year in 2016?

Warren racked up 106 yards on 28 carries as the Longhorns’ main offensive weapon outside of Swoopes. That performance is likely even more impressive than his 276-yard, four-touchdown showing on Thanksgiving against Texas Tech because the Baylor defense is better and knew Texas was going to stick with the run in the second half.

“Warren is the real deal,” Gray said of his teammate. “With him and D’Onta [Foreman], the team will be set at running back for a long time.”

Warren, a freshman who’s savvy beyond his years, credits the Texas game plan and his offensive line for his results the past two weeks.

“It’s never as easy as it looks,” Warren said. “If it looked easy, I apologize. You have to come out and try to execute. I have to run hard and make sure that I can be physical. We got the job done [against Baylor].”

 

5. What’s next for the Longhorns?

Beginning now, Strong will need to do a lot of soul searching as he tries to figure out staff changes (there will be movement, folks), recruiting and how to get the most from his players on a consistent basis instead of just when they get their hackles up.

“We will use [the win against Baylor] as a springboard for next spring and summer,” Strong said. “We’re close — we’re getting there — and we will be better next season. We need to build with the big guys — the offensive and defensive lines — in recruiting because that’s where it all starts.

“There were so many times this year that we missed opportunities to win games,” Strong added. “Let’s move forward and find the answers because we have the core talent and the experience now to get this program back to where it belongs.”

 

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