Baylor air attack relentless

Convention has it that any football team with a big lead in the second half will run the football as much as possible.

Case in point is WSU, which ran the ball 24 times for 274 yards in the third and fourth quarters of last week’s blowout win against Idaho last week.

In another game halfway across the country, however, things weren’t going as the usual script would dictate.

Baylor held a comfortable late-game lead against Division I-AA Northwestern State, and what did the Bears proceed to do? Throw it, of course.

Baylor ran the ball just eight times against its overwhelmed opponent, getting all five offensive touchdowns through the air on 46 passes. When the Bears travel to Seattle this weekend to play WSU, expect much of the same.

Over the off-season, head coach Guy Morriss decided his team needed a new offensive look, and he felt the need to look no further than conference rival Texas Tech for inspiration. He brought in Lee Hays, the offensive coordinator from West Texas A&M, to install a system similar to the unorthodox yet effective spread passing game made famous by the Red Raiders.

“We’re kind of in between where Texas Tech is at and the conventional,” Hays said. “The kids know what to do. They’ve just got to do it faster.”

Opponents, however, don’t always have such an easy time grasping the ins and outs of Baylor’s new system. The Bears will play almost every down with four wide receivers, spreading the offensive line out much farther than normal as well.

Then, using a fairly simple combination of underneath routes, quarterback Shawn Bell will throw the ball. A lot.

“We just think about putting up more points than the other team,” said Bell, a senior who will almost certainly shatter Baylor passing records this season because of the new system. “It is a lot better for me.”

By doing things so differently than other teams, the Bears intend to put pressure on every team they face, especially ones like WSU which haven’t seen this type of offense on the field.

WSU normally depends on its defensive ends to generate a significant pass rush, but doing so this week could be difficult because of the splits on the offensive line – sometimes as wide as 4 yards between players.

“When you’re coming off the edge it just takes that much longer to get there,” WSU head coach Bill Doba said. “(And) if you try to blitz it too much they’ll kill you.”

Still, the Bears have shown they have a long way to go. Baylor hasn’t enjoyed a winning season since 1995, and in a season-opening loss to TCU it showed some of the same propensity for mistakes on offense that made things difficult in years past.

Baylor outgained TCU in that game, but scored only seven points as it repeatedly failed to come away with points when opportunities presented themselves.

“When we get to that red zone, it seems like we just stop in our progress,” said Baylor wideout Trent Shelton, who leads the team with 14 catches for 219 yards. “It’ll still take time. The more games, the better the offense is going to roll.”

Bell estimated that for all the apparent complexity of the Baylor offense, they really run no more than 20 plays in a game, just with different formations thrown in to confuse things for opponents.

Hays said one of the best advantages of the offense is the confusion it can cause defenses, both in the week preparing for a game and within the course of the game itself. Hays and his fellow coaches have a term – UFOs – for defenses so bizarre that they have been created just for that one week.

What if WSU decides to bring one to the field this week? Well, that’s just fine with him.

“A lot of times people will change what they do,” Hays said, “and that’s what we hope for.”