As a writer, you love being right until it plays with your emotions. After listing the 3 Keys for Baylor to upset Utah (hyperlink?) last week, I was pleased that I had understood said keys correctly, but slowly crawled into the fetal position as Baylor failed to achieve those goals.

This week, Baylor has a much easier matchup with a reeling Air Force team that just fell at home to SJSU (San Jose State for those who aren’t CFB addicts).

Here are the three keys to taking care of business on Saturday:

1) Be Bold (Immediately, and Often)

Other than Josh Cameron’s 47 yard beastmode touchdown catch and run, Baylor had a total of TWO passes go for 10 or more yards.

Dequan Finn rarely made it (or was given the time to make it) through his progressions to look deep, and when he did, miscommunication and inaccuracy plagued those attempts. It didn’t look like the “exciting and new” offense Baylor fans were promised under Jake Spavital, and after an injury to QB1 , many fans have begun calling Finn to be replaced by Sawyer Robertson.

Regardless of who starts the game, this offense requires more… any… success in the deeper passing game.

During the offseason, Baylor seemed to be branding itself as a new and explosive offense revamped and ready to bring in fans for 2024, but through 2 games it seems we have copy-pasted our 2023 team and hit “upgrade” on our defense. That’s not a bad thing, but this team needs excitement for the locker room, it needs excitement for the fans, and most importantly, it needs excitement for our ‘25 recruiting class. Regardless of how comfortable Spavital feels with our QBs, it’s time to take shots, and a lot of them. If we can’t do that against Air Force, it may be time to hover your hands over that panic button.

2) Be Big

For Baylor fans to feel any sort of confidence heading into Week 4, the Baylor offensive line has to have a massive bounce-back performance vs. Air Force. The Bears could in theory win this game easily with how the line played last week, but neither the fans or the coaches want to settle for that.

To completely dominate this one, the O line has to play up to their talent potential. To measure that, I want to see more than 4.2 yards per carry, 1 sack or less, and less than 7 QB pressures allowed. These may seem like lofty expectations, but they are numbers we need to meet against a G5 team to allow our pass game to flourish against a defense like BYU or ISU.

3) Be Base-d On Defense

(very radio commercial disclaimer voice) The Utah offense was successful in early drives vs Baylor. The overall performance of the Utah offense in Week 2 was likely significantly impacted by the Cam Rising injury. OsoMediaGroup acknowledges this, but will not apologize for strong defensive performances regardless of opponent injury status.

The Baylor defense, say whatever you will about Utah and their available players for some percentage of that game, rose to the challenge.

You can still have a good defense with that performance on the road vs a top-15 team, but Baylor likely needs even more out of their defense while the offense finds it’s footing. There were many metrics that explain just how good the ‘21 defense was, but the most direct correlation is how dominant Baylor was against the run with only 5,4, or sometimes only 3 people in the box. This allowed Dave to be much more creative with his coverage and blitz schemes, and forced teams to kneel and pray that their receivers could somehow find paydirt on a deep ball consistently.

It is highly unlikely that the ‘24 version will be quite that good, but the unit will need to turn it up a notch if Baylor wants to go bowling. It is likely Baylor plays “cookie-cutter” on the defensive side of the ball this week, rather than putting anything too creative on tape.

In most years, this week’s opponent would be a gnarly test for any defense. However, this offseason Air Force lost TEN starters on offense including their top two running backs and all 5 starting offensive linemen. Air Force amassed a TOTAL of 197 of offense and only 7 points vs SJSU. Baylor should be able to hold serve on defense without too much strain. Line up in base looks, maintain discipline, and get to work.

Hoping and assuming that this game gets out of hand, I want to see the Baylor defense:

• allow less than 3 YPC

• allow less than 100 passing yards

• force 2 or more turnovers.