Baylor followed up its remarkable 2021 Big 12 title campaign with a 12-2 record and then proceeded to finish below .500 in eacb of the last two seasons, posting 6-7 and 3-9 records.
With that slippage, Andy Staples declared on Monday’s On3 YouTube live stream that Bears head coach Dave Aranda is now “squarely” on the hot seat entering the 2024 season. He may not need to win the conference again, or even hit the eight-win mark, but he has to get back to a bowl in order to keep the faith down in Waco.
As part of their show detailing the ceilings and floors of every Big 12 team heading into this fall, Staples and Ari Temkin of Big 12 Radio on Sirius XM broke down all 16 programs, including Baylor. So check out below their analysis on BU.
Ceiling
Temkin kicked off the optimistic portion of the segment by selling the audience on Baylor’s new pieces on the offensive side of the ball.
“So, it looks to me like they’ve fixed their offense a little bit,” he commented. “Now, the ceiling on that is the question here. But they brought in the right quarterback in the right system. You’ve got a (Jake) Spavital offense with a quarterback that can run (DeQuan Finn) right, went for 600 yards and seven touchdowns last year, was the Player of the Year in the MAC.”
They got their new quarterback a shiny new toy in the slot to go along with him, too.
“They also brought in Ashton Hawkins, a slot receiver from Texas State who had a lot of success under Spavital. He, in combination with the guys they have left over, I think that’s going to be a legit receiving corps,” said Temkin, adding: “They’ve had a good running game. The issue was the offensive line last year, and you know, all the indications are the OL has improved.”
Even with a defense that has its own question marks, Ari Temkin likes the changes made.
“The question is: how improved can their defense be? Because you have Gary Patterson and Dave Aranda working on it. Me personally, I’m buying it.”
With all that in Baylor’s favor, Andy Staples set the high-water mark at eight wins for the Bears this coming season.
“I’m going to put the ceiling at 8-4,” he said, noting the schedule. “Now, they go to Utah, they go to Ames, they go to Colorado, they go to Lubbock, they go to Morgantown. But they get BYU, Oklahoma State, TCU, Kansas at home.”
That’s not a terribly tough home or road slate aside from the early Utah trip. Looking at that schedule, Ari Temkin is an even bigger believer than Staples.
“I wanna say the ceiling should be higher. I genuinely think (Aranda) is a really good coach. So I don’t believe he’s going to have a bad year and they’re going to fire him. I love Finn, he’s obviously unproven at this level, but I just think it’s the right guy in the right spot. So I think 8-9. I’ve got a few surprise Big 12 contenders, Baylor could be one of them.”
Floor
Even with the head coach manning the defense, Temkin understands that side of the ball is still a very big mystery heading into a make-or-break season.
“How much faith do you have that Dave Aranda will get this defense right? Because that’s where a lot of this falls right now. Because the offensive and defensive lines were a big problem last year for Baylor.”
For that reason, Andy Staples foresees a very big pitfall for Baylor if they do come in closer to their floor than ceiling.
“The thing about this situation, though, is if it goes south, it goes south bad,” said Staples. “So, it could be 3-9 as the floor.”
Temkin added: We’re going to have a lot of these. There’s a lot of teams that have wide spreads. Like, could be 10-win teams, could be two-win teams. Baylor was like that last year, and we saw early it was going to be a low ceiling team. But I’m with you, difference could be here or there between two wins and eight wins or nine wins.”
So, Baylor truly could go either way in these guys’ opinions, finishing anywhere from Big 12 champs to bottom of the barrel in the new conference.
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