3 reasons why Texas football could cook Baylor on Black Friday

The dominance of Texas’ ground game

Turning the page to the matchups for the Longhorns on the offensive side of the ball, there’s a lot that I like about this contest against the Baylor defense. As long as Texas is blocking well along the interior of the offensive line, we should see the ground game come to life for the second week in a row.

We’ve seen the likes of Bijan, senior running back Roschon Johnson, sophomore Jonathon Brooks, etc. run wild against better defensive fronts than Baylor this season.

But the key to this game in terms of making the ground game work against Baylor will be limiting what nose tackle Siaki Ika is able to do in the trenches. If Texas can even effectively double-team Ika at the line of scrimmage, we should see another big performance out of the duo of Bijan and Roschon.

It’s also worth noting that this Texas running back duo is likely playing its last game at DKR against Baylor. Given how good Roschon was the last three regular season finales in his collegiate career, combined with Bijan’s effectiveness when Sark actually gives him a decent workload, this is building to be a big game for this standout duo.

I will say that this Baylor defense is not a pushover. Most Big 12 teams were not able to run all over Baylor. More or less, most of the better rushing attacks in the Big 12 this season were methodical and effective against the Bears, but not extremely explosive (i.e. Eric Gray and Deuce Vaughn both rushing for 106 yards against Baylor).

The problem that Baylor is facing in this game has to do with its inability to defend versatile running backs. Vaughn and Gray combined for more than 100 receiving yards and one score against Baylor in the last few weeks.

And given the multiple ways that the trio of Bijan, Roschon, and Keilan Robinson can terrorize opposing defenses, this looks like it will be problematic for Baylor to defend so many talented backs this week.