Whether it was as a high school coach in Texas or an assistant coach in Lawrence, Kansas University football coach David Beaty has seen plenty of Baylor’s Art Briles throughout the past several years.
And, while Beaty remembers Briles first and foremost as a legendary high school coach at Stephenville High in the Lone Star State, the fact that the eighth-year Baylor coach has been able to take his offensive system and make it work at the major-college level is what Beaty marvels at most.
“I tell you what, that is an impressive team to watch,” Beaty said of 4-0 Baylor. “It really is. It’s kind of fun to watch ’em unless you’re playing ’em. When you’re playing ’em, that’s a whole different deal.”
The winless Jayhawks will do just that at 11 a.m. today, and, whether that means Kansas will surprise some people and turn in a respectable performance in front of its home crowd or gets its doors blown off like all four of Baylor’s 2015 opponents have already this season, one thing is certain: Beaty is bracing for a heck of a show from the Baylor offense.
“They’re gonna get their yards,” Beaty said. “We have to try to find a way to create points on our side and then limit their possibilities of scoring, try to make ’em snap it again and create some situations where they have to kick field goals or we hold ’em out.”
Baylor enters this week’s game with Kansas as the No. 1-scoring team in America, averaging 64 points per game. The Jayhawks, meanwhile, have given up an average of 40 points per outing and rank 120th in scoring defense.
Beaty said Briles has recruited “some of the fastest humans on the planet” and found ways to fit that speed flawlessly into his system.
“Although they’re a spread team, you do not see it the way they run it more than that one time a year,” Beaty said of the Bears’ wide splits and utilization of the entire field. “The way that they spread you out and spread the field, it forces you to pick where you want to be. Do you want to be heavy in the box, or do you want to be heavy in the pass?
“They ran a little bubble swing when (Baylor assistant) Kendal (Briles) was playing back at Houston, and then he ran the option after he caught the bubble. I’d never seen that. How do you defend that? How do you catch a bubble and then pitch off the corner? I haven’t seen anybody run that since, and I haven’t seen them run that since. I hope they don’t start it this weekend. We’ll prepare for it.”
The other part of the equation which makes Baylor’s offense so impressive is the one for which Beaty seems to have the utmost respect.
“Those guys are brilliant,” Beaty said of Briles and his assistant coaches. “They’re very smart about how they do it, and they don’t tell a lot of people about it. You can try to copy it, but there’s a lot of details that go into it that helps them be as successful as they are. You can see it happen on video, but (its brilliance doesn’t really hit you) until you understand how they do it, and you go, ‘Wow, why didn’t I think of that?'”
Briles was asked about Beaty’s compliment, and the old Baylor ball coach balked at Beaty’s superlative.
“Brilliant?” he asked. “I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t use brilliant. I mean, other people can determine what they feel about it. We’re just trying to grind and make first down like anybody else.”
So far so good in that department. The Bears rank ninth in the nation with 130 first downs through four games. Every other team in the Top 20 in that category has played five games.
