The Baylor Bears’ much-improved running game serves as a stiff test for this Oklahoma Sooners’ defensive line.
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As Oklahoma wraps their final preparations for their trip to Waco, Texas, the Sooners’ minds are squarely on winning this game. How they go about winning the game is an entirely different situation. Baylor presents unique challenges on both sides of the ball, but for Oklahoma’s defense, they must overcome one big obstacle: Baylor’s rushing attack.
Baylor’s running game is the foundation of their offensive attack. Gerry Bohanon is a solid college quarterback in his own right, but it’s his duo of running backs that make this offense go. Abram Smith and Trestan Ebner run a version of the zone running scheme to near perfection.
After struggling with the running game in 2020, Baylor’s rushing numbers did a complete 180 in the spring thanks to tinkering by Jeff Grimes, their new offensive coordinator who spent time recently at BYU. Baylor averaged a very light 90.3 rushing yards per game last season, and that was very close to the bottom of the totem pole across all of the FBS. Currently, they are 7th with 230.9 YPG at a clip of 5.89 yards per rush.
The “wide zone” is used in the professional ranks as well, and it simply allows your ball carriers to give their offensive linemen time to out-leverage their assignments until a hole opens up. It allows for teams to be very multiple and versatile in formations as well. Baylor dresses their wide zone runs on film quite a bit, but they’ve run it out of at least 12 different formations this year.
The Sooners will trot out a likely starting defensive line of Perrion Winfrey, Jalen Redmond, Isaiah Thomas, and Nik Bonitto as the edge. When defending against this scheme, teams struggle because their interior defensive linemen get double-teamed far too easily. Whichever way the play comes, there’s likely some sort of combination block by the center and the play side guard, which becomes a double team. Too many people leave the double team too soon, allowing for the defensive linemen to penetrate. That’s where Oklahoma can make its stand. Perrion Winfrey is very disruptive, and so is Jalen Redmond.
Both have excellent play strength and can shed blocks before offensive linemen can truly engage them and dictate where they want them to go. If they can do that right, it should leave gaps for their linebackers to fill. The other side to this equation is the linebackers finishing plays by wrapping up and tackling these Bears’ running backs.
Tackling has been a significant issue for Oklahoma this year. If they tackle and play good football with good gap integrity, there’s no reason to believe they can’t stymie this Bears rushing attack enough to walk away victorious.
The Sooners have faced some good running backs this year. Names like Bijan Robinson, Deuce Vaughn, Kendre Miller, and SaRodorick Thompson are just a few. The Sooners have fared pretty well against them all. If the Sooners are to remain undefeated, Alex Grinch and his defensive staff will have to conjure up another good performance.
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