Natty Week Part 4

[tsweezy]

Now we jump to the other side and look at the fearsome Baylor offense against the Tennessee defense. This is a much more complex matchup than the reverse was, and is way more up in the air about what could happen.

Baylor Offense

QB

Well, let’s start with the big fish. (Sr) QB Travis Knebel is worthy of every superlative label you can give him. A+ basically everywhere, I would bet money he comes out for the draft this year with the highest overall of any prospect ever and goes 1^st overall to the Cards. He won the Heisman this year despite barely playing half of the season with how many blowouts there were. Due to that he doesn’t have quite as gaudy stats, but still went over 70% completion with 3000 yards, 27 TDs, 6 INTs, and only 4 sacks. He also adds a ton of value on the ground with over 2000 rushing yards and 22 TDs. His ability to operate the option game is unparalleled and he’s too slippery to catch in the pocket. How do you gameplan against somebody who can hurt you so many ways?

Grade: 5/5

RB

The Baylor RB room is actually kind of crazy. They have an A- (Sr) receiving AND A- balanced RBs who could be high end D1 starters and have over 5 YPC, but are overshadowed by Speed back (Jr) Hinojosa who has unparalleled breakaway ability. Knebel and Hino have almost the same number of carries (250) and the RB averages 7.6 YPC with 27 rushing TDs. This is a loaded room that’s amazing at pretty much everything. I assume Hinojosa will be the number 1 option on the entire team next season too.

Grade: 4.75/5

WR

We’ve talked about the running game as the center, but the WRs are pretty damn good themselves. At the top of the list are the 2 A overalls: Mozgov and Prochnow. Both have about 100 catches, but Prochnow’s speed let him turn that into 1900 yards / 19 TD vs. Mozgov’s 1000/10. Behind that they have a few B+/A- level pass catchers, but nobody else gets more than 20 yards per game, it’s very much a 2-player type of room. Those two are damn good though

Grade: 4.5/5

TE

Jonathan Burke is pretty good, a B+ receiving threat, but Knebel doesn’t seem to target him much and he only has 13 catches on the year. A pretty minor player in their offense.

Grade: 3/5

OL

This is a kind of lopsided room. Their tackles are an A- pass blocker and A- balanced player, and neither are particularly great at run blocking. The RG, John Raymond (the only offensive starter with Prochnow to not be from the 2019/2020 genned classes) is an A pass blocker with D run blocking, which is a bit odd considering what the offense is geared around. However, the LG and C combo is very good. Armstead has B+ run blocking at guard and Watkins is a true A center with A+ strength and A+ run blocking. It’s clear that running interior left has the most beef, and Baylor knows it considering the overwhelming majority of their runs are behind that pair. Additionally, those 2 have 22 combined pancakes compared to 10 by the rest of the OL combined.

Overall the OL is less good than I expected, but the skill players are so good that it’s been ok.

Grade: 3/5

 

Tennessee defense

DL

This is probably the strength of Tennessee’s defense. They convinced a pair of good DEs to return for a (Sr) year, Cano is an A overall speed rusher with A’s across the board and is probably the best defensive player on the team. On the other side we’ve seen a pretty even split between (Sr) Mike Anderson, a balanced B+ player, and (Fr) 5-star Roger London. London is the better pass rusher and gets the star against air raid teams, but Anderson has better run defense and is playing against Baylor. At DT there is a set of 3 players rotating. DE Doug Dimmadome Jr. actually rotates in and plays here, as he is just flat out more skilled than everyone else, even with the out of position penalty. The other spot rotates a bit between (Fr) 5-star Ernesto Moran and (So) nose tackle Jonathan Sowell. All of them have been phenomenally productive with the 5 “starters” racking up a cumulative 89 TFL and 57 sacks which would be a top-20 team production by themselves despite only 1 of them being better than a B+

Grade: 4.25/5

LB

And immediately behind them is the weakness of the defense. Two Bs and a B+ at LB, 2x coverage and 1x speed. The ratings are fairly middling, and the production is as well. Adames in the middle has 17 TFLs and 2 safeties which is fun, but overall this unit is just average, and a bit prone to being attacked (compared to the rest of the defense). Most worrisome is that they are all pass defense focused and are really bog standard players against the run, giving up a LOT of yardage on the year. Concerning when playing Baylor.

Grade: 2.75/5

CB

The corner room is very young. At the top you have B+ Senior Ben Jordan who can’t quite handle most teams WR1s, and then behind him are a slew of underclassmen Bs who have good coverage grades but are not stellar athletes. Jordan and Gsellman have combined for 10 INTs and 18 Pass Deflections so they aren’t terrible, but they can definitely get burned by a good passing attack.

Grade: 3/5

Safeties

The safety room in contrast is much better, and is a huge part of why the Tennessee defense isn’t picked apart through the air. Matt Richardson is an A overall ball hawk and should see his name called pretty early in next years draft. He doesn’t show up much in the stat sheet but does most of the dirty work in providing double coverages and support roles. On the other side is underappreciated Jawun Burfict. An A- player, he has A+ man coverage skills and A speed, the two most important attributes and is absolutely the guy who stops receivers from getting over the top of the defense. This combination results in a good bend don’t break defense where opposing teams get a fair bit of yardage but have a hard time landing explosive plays that result in points.

Grade: 4/5

 

Overall Philosophies:

Baylor offense:

It’s actually much harder for me to pin down exactly what Baylor’s offensive identity is. Obviously it all revolves around Travis, but they don’t have many true bread and butter plays besides the inside run (which they call a lot). They seem happy to throw the kitchen sink with a wide array of option plays, RPOs, the inside runs, and then a smattering of play action and long ball shots. With that kind of variety it’s really hard to decide what to defend against and they seem happy to hammer you on whatever you’re giving up. A nightmare to gameplan for and a big part of why they’re 15-0 right now going for a national championship. I actually don’t know what to predict them doing (probably a little bit of everything).

Tennessee Defense:

Tennessee has been the epitome of bend don’t break. The 19^th best defense in PPG allowed while being 77^th in yardage allowed really speaks to that. In the bottom 25 for passing yards allowed, and middle of the road against the run leaves you wondering what they *are* good at. But that is havoc plays and drive enders. They seem content to let you get a first down and then pull a big sack or TFL and then 1 incompletion and boom, empty yardage with no points. In fact they’re the 3^rd best team at causing both of those, with 5 sacks and 5 non-sack TFLs per game. They will definitely need those havoc plays against Baylor to stand a chance. A lot of teams seem to have tried to shut down Baylor’s passing attack, and some have been successful but it didn’t stop that offense. We went the opposite direction, against every formation we are playing 100% run defense and blitzing aggressively with the goal of creating those havoc plays and forcing Knebel to get out of his comfort zone and play a more aerial game. Will it be successful? Probably not, but we just have to stop a few drives and hope the offense can live up to our expectations to win a shoot out.

 

Final Tally

BAYL	BAYL score	TENN	TENN Score
OL	3	DL	4.25
RB	4.75	LB	2.75
TE	3
WR	4.5	CB	3
QB	5	S	4
Total	20.25/25 (4.05/5)	Total	14/20 (3.5/5)

 

Prediction:

Baylor does almost anything they want… most of the time. They take a few disrupted drives and settle for a few FGs more than they like and end up scoring 44 points. Not a great defensive performance, but perfectly possible for the offense to top.

 

Sadly defensive gameplans are now unavailable for viewing so can’t share that.