Do the Baylor Bears Have a Confidence Problem?
The Baylor Bears came into the season as defending conference champions and favorites to take the title again. Five weeks in, they're 3-2 and have already at least temporarily lost their grip on the top of the Big 12 standings after losses to BYU and Oklahoma State.
Seemingly the only commonality in those two losses has been coach Dave Aranda saying the Bears might have been too confident going into the matchups.
Aranda said his staff felt confident going into Saturday's game with the Cowboys, but they weren't sure if the confidence was rooted in reality, a feeling they had before the September 10 loss at BYU.
With a preseason top-10 ranking this year as opposed to being unranked in the preseason last year, the 2021 team was a lot more level-headed than this year's squad.
“There was a lot of confidence with [the 2021 team], but it was grounded confidence, and we are not there yet,” Aranda said. “This ain’t last year…I think I have to be more black and white in terms of expectations.”
The Bears still have a chance to equal their 10-2 regular season record from last year, but if their confidence is going to over-inflate after a win or two, it's going to be impossible for them to rattle off seven wins in a row, especially in a wide-open Big 12.
For Bears fans, it has to be disconcerting to hear this is a recurring issue. Especially since Aranda's team last year looked so prepared, well-led, and rarely started sluggishly, all things that were not apparent when the 2022 Bears fell down 23-3 before touching the ball in the second half.
What's more, the Bears' defense had its best moments when the pressure was on in 2021. They stopped a 2-point conversion in the final seconds to beat Iowa State, they shut out Texas in the 4th quarter in a comeback win and they famously stopped the Cowboys at the 1-yard line in the Big 12 Championship Game. 2022 is a different story.
Baylor was down 9-3 when the Cowboys got the ball for their last possession of the second half, yet when they took a meaningful snap again, the Pokes had added two more touchdowns. For the fourth straight game, the Bears allowed the opponent to score a touchdown on their final drive of the first half. Only FCS Albany was stopped this year.
“That is something that we have known,” linebacker Dillon Doyle said. “We haven’t been good in critical moments, and that’s something that as we mature as a defense if we go to the places we want to go, we are going to have to mature and continue to improve on.”
The Bears have 12 days to ground themselves before a Thursday night road test at West Virginia, and they can't afford to get too confident if they win because next up after that is a duel with the Big 12-leading Kansas Jayhawks. What a world we live in.
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You can follow Cameron Stuart on Twitter @RealCamStuart
Covering Baylor for Inside The Bears and the Locked on Baylor podcast. You can follow me for more Baylor content at @realcamstuart on Twitter. Originally from Rockland, Massachusetts and a Baylor alum, so I might mix the occasional bias and/or Boston sports tweet in there every once in a while.