Who Will Be Baylor's Feature Back in Week 2?
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Going into Saturday night's game against the Albany Great Danes, it was expected that we would see the Baylor Bears use several running backs, they would dominate on the ground, and we would be asking ourselves who would be the starting back in Week 2 against BYU.
Well, we still asking the question, but the journey to get there was a little different than originally thought.
Not that it was any sort of catastrophe, but the Bears didn't overpower FCS Albany on the ground. The final stats are a little deceiving, with the Bears rushing for 259 yards for the game, but 115 of those yards came in the final quarter, when both teams had dipped into their bench.
The running back position was a big question mark coming into this game and, honestly, there were not many answers to the question out there on the field. The Bears graduated the only two backs that got real playing time last year in Abram Smith and Trestan Ebner and this year are handing the ball off to a bunch of guys who haven't been key contributors.
There was a ton of positivity surrounding the running back room in fall camp, with Taye McWilliams saying it could be the best running back room in the country this year.
McWilliams started the game for the Bears on Saturday, rushing 12 times for 45 yards, the team's fourth leading rusher on the night, and staying under 4 yards a carry against a team that gave up an average of 184 rushing yards per game in 2021.
To be fair, the Bears were certainly looking like a pass-first offense in the first half, with quarterback Blake Shapen throwing for over 200 yards and a couple of touchdowns in the first two quarters.
Still, while the rushing numbers still look good at the end of the day, the style we come to expect with this offense just was not there. McWilliams was trying to bounce it to the outside all night and was largely unsuccessful, a stark contrast from the offense Jeff Grimes ran last year with Smith that hinged upon downhill, north-south running.
Late in the game, Richard Reese and Qualan Jones boosted the rushing numbers and looked more like the runners we have been accustomed to seeing the last handful of years. Reese looked fantastic for much of the fourth quarter, albeit against some second-string guys on an FCS team.
So, while McWilliams had the most experience going into the season (of course, it still wasn't much), I wouldn't be surprised to see if Reese shoulders more of the load next Saturday at BYU.
McWilliams will still feature heavily, and it's not even necessarily the final stats that point to Reese, but more so the style of play. The freshman isn't as big or as physical a runner as Smith, but he gets downhill in a hurry. McWilliams, on the other hand, still does have the speed to be an outside runner like Ebner was, but there is a reason Ebner wasn't the every down back.
Based on what we saw Saturday, Reese seems to fit the offense better. Then again, the question of who will be the starting running back by the end of the year is still open-ended.
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