Baylor Just Showed TCU Exactly How It Wants to Win

Baylor’s rout of Arizona State gives TCU plenty to study before the I-35 Revivalry, and Jason Phillips sees a challenge on both sides of the football.

Oct 3, 2026; Tempe, Arizona, USA; Baylor Bears wide receiver Louis Brown IV (4) makes a catch for a touchdown against Arizona State Sun Devils defensive back Rodney Bimage Jr. (0) during the second quarter at Mountain America Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Anna Carrington-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Baylor just gave TCU one hell of a challenge.

And I actually love that TCU gets two weeks to prepare for it.

The Bears walked into Arizona State and won 55-19 in their final game before TCU comes to Waco. They ran for 244 yards. DJ Lagway threw four touchdown passes. Their defense created pressure, stopped the run and came away with three takeaways.

But after watching the game again, those aren't the numbers that interested me most. Baylor didn't look like a team searching for answers.

They looked like a team that knew exactly how it wanted to win.

And then they made Arizona State play that game.

Baylor Put Arizona State In a Bind

Offensively, Jake Spavital made Arizona State choose.

Spread the field. Make the defense defend every blade of grass.

Bring the safeties down and Lagway can throw the football over your head. Keep them back and Baylor will run it.

Arizona State spent a lot of the night trying to protect itself from the passing game, and Baylor responded by running for 244 yards.

But I don't want to make that sound like Baylor's offensive line just lined up and physically whipped Arizona State for four quarters. That's not what I saw.

Baylor created favorable numbers, its perimeter players blocked well and Arizona State’s tackling was as bad as I’ve seen in a long time.

That's a bad combination.

Ryelan Morris' 63-yard touchdown and Caden Knighten's 75-yarder are good examples. Those weren't two running backs breaking six tackles on the way to the end zone. Baylor got Arizona State flowing, created the crease and once the back hit it, there wasn't anybody left.

Sep 26, 2026; Waco, Texas, USA; Baylor Bears running back Ryelan Morris (25) carries the ball against the Colorado Buffaloes during the first half at McLane Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Chris Jones-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

That's good offensive football.

Make the defense wrong no matter what it chooses.

And the guy who makes that equation much more difficult is Lagway.

Lagway Is Starting to Look Comfortable

This was probably my biggest offensive takeaway.

DJ Lagway looked comfortable.

That's important because he's still relatively new to Baylor's system and playing with new teammates after transferring in.

He wasn't perfect against Arizona State. He missed some throws early. What I liked was Baylor's response.

They didn't start coaching scared.

Spavital didn't shrink the playbook or stop asking Lagway to attack the field. Baylor kept throwing it, kept taking shots and kept making Arizona State defend him. Lagway finished with 306 passing yards, four touchdown passes and no interceptions, and added another touchdown on the ground.

And when the quarterback starts finding a rhythm, everybody else gets more dangerous. Safeties can't start cheating downhill. Linebackers can't start stealing steps toward the run. The defense has to respect the entire field.

And those running lanes that were already there start getting even bigger. That's something TCU needs to understand before it gets to Waco.

I don't necessarily think the answer is blitzing Lagway every snap. I'd be much more interested in making him uncomfortable before he gets comfortable. Change the picture. Move the front. Make him get to his second read. Get somebody around his feet early. Make him think about the rush before the rush actually gets there. Because Saturday night, once Lagway found his rhythm, Arizona State never really knocked him out of it.

Baylor Was Creating a Different Problem on Defense

This is where the game became especially interesting to me.

I've coached a version of the defense Baylor is running, so I recognized a lot of what they appeared to be trying to accomplish.

First-year defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman came to Baylor after running the defense at Kansas State, and one of the players who followed him to Waco was Ryan Davis, the Jack who would eventually make one of Baylor's biggest defensive plays Saturday night. And the mistake people sometimes make when watching this kind of defense is counting how many people are coming after the quarterback.

That's not really the problem.

The problem is figuring out which ones are coming.

Baylor used its defensive line movement extremely well. The linemen would slant hard with that first step and then get vertical once they cleared their original alignment. But the more interesting stuff was happening behind them.

Baylor repeatedly used its athletic defensive ends and linebackers to create problems for Arizona State's protection.

One of my favorite examples looked like something we used to call playing a “fiddle” on the running back. Basically, two defenders work together to account for one player, in this case the back. The linebacker and defensive end essentially work together against the back. From what I could see, if the running back released, the defensive end could peel with him while the linebacker became the rusher. If the back stayed in protection, the linebacker could account for him while the defensive end continued rushing.

The exact assignments are impossible to know without sitting in Baylor's meeting room, but the effect on the offense is what matters.

Arizona State couldn't be certain which defender it was actually responsible for blocking. On one first-quarter sack, the linebacker came from his normal alignment and initially looked like he could simply be responsible for the running back. The back released across the defensive end's face, the end went with him and the linebacker came through the B gap. The tackle never saw him.

That's the beauty of this kind of defense.

Baylor can rush four and make five offensive linemen and a running back feel like they're trying to block six.

The Guy You Expect to Rush Might Catch Your Pass

Baylor showed another version of the same problem on an interception. They presented what looked like a 3-4 structure, with three big defensive linemen inside, an athletic edge player to the boundary and a safety walked down to the field. They also let their defensive ends play standing up, which kept the offense guessing. Were they going to move into a three-down look? Stay in a four-down look and rush the ends standing up? Or drop one into coverage while a completely different player, one the offense hadn't accounted for pre-snap, came screaming through a gap and into the quarterback's face? Then the picture changed after the snap.

The interior movement occupied the protection while Baylor brought pressure from elsewhere. But the boundary edge player, essentially a defensive end in Baylor's four-down looks who can stand up and become an outside linebacker when they shift into a 3-4 look, dropped into the flat. At the same time, the defensive line slanted toward him while the pressure came from the opposite side.

The pressure got there quickly enough that the quarterback had to get rid of the football. And guess who was waiting for it?

The edge player who didn't rush but instead dropped to the flat away from the blitz side. Ryan Davis.

Interception.

That play tells you almost everything you need to understand about what makes this defense difficult.

The guy Arizona State expected to rush the quarterback ended up catching his pass. Baylor showed variations of that throughout the game. Sometimes pressure came from a safety. Sometimes from a corner. Sometimes the defensive end dropped. Sometimes an inside linebacker attacked a gap.

The point wasn't always to bring more people than Arizona State could block.

It was to make Arizona State figure out who the hell it was supposed to block.

I Think Baylor Found Something

There was one other thing I kept noticing.

Baylor's defensive front seemed to know where Arizona State wanted to go. I can't tell you without being in Baylor's defensive meeting room that they had identified a specific tendency, but it happened too often for me to completely dismiss it as coincidence. Baylor would slant its defensive line away from the side the running back was on while also bringing a safety or corner from the side they slanted away from. Now you've created two problems.

Oct 3, 2026; Tempe, Arizona, USA; Arizona State Sun Devils quarterback Cutter Boley (8) hands the ball off to Arizona State Sun Devils running back Jason Brown Jr. (22) against the Baylor Bears during the fourth quarter at Mountain America Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Anna Carrington-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

On the run plays I was seeing, slanting away from the running back’s alignment put the defensive line in the direction the back and any pulling offensive linemen were headed. Meanwhile, the defender coming off the opposite edge could chase the play from behind and follow those pulling linemen to the ball carrier.

Arizona State never seemed to find a consistent answer for it. Baylor repeatedly appeared to be slanting into the path of the play.

Maybe Baylor had identified something in Arizona State's tendencies. Maybe the movement was built into the defensive call based on formation, back alignment or something else Baylor was seeing.

I can't know that from the TV copy.

What I can see is that the movement appeared to have a purpose.

Baylor wasn't just moving for the sake of movement.

Baylor Dictated the Game

The more I watched the game, the more I realized Baylor was creating a similar problem on both sides of the football.

Uncertainty.

Offensively, Arizona State had to decide what it wanted to take away. Commit another defender to stopping the run and risk giving Lagway opportunities downfield, or protect against the pass and give Baylor favorable numbers to run the football.

And with a quarterback as talented as Lagway is with the ball in his hands, that can quickly become a no-win situation. Even when the defense gets the numbers right, the quarterback can create one more.

Defensively, Baylor created uncertainty in a completely different way. Arizona State's offensive line couldn't always be sure where the fourth rusher was coming from or which defender was about to disappear into coverage.

That's why I keep coming back to the same thing.

Baylor dictated the game.

And I'll give Baylor credit for something else.

When Arizona State started wobbling, Baylor didn't let it recover. The missed tackles started piling up. The run fits got worse. Defenders started over-pursuing. The explosive plays came.

Baylor kept attacking.

That's what impressed me most.

Not 55 points.

Not 564 yards.

Not even winning by 36 on the road.

Baylor looked like a team that knew how it wanted to win and was able to make its opponent play accordingly.

Now TCU Gets Two Weeks

That's what makes the next one interesting.

TCU Showgirls during the TCU vs BYU 2026 game | Tony Beblowski for KillerFrogs.com

TCU-Baylor doesn't need much help becoming personal. This rivalry has produced enough strange games and hard feelings that neither program needs somebody explaining why it matters. Now Baylor enters it after probably its most complete performance of the season. Good.

Because TCU knows exactly what's waiting in Waco.

It has two weeks to study how Baylor creates those favorable numbers in the run game.

Two weeks to figure out how it wants to affect Lagway before he settles into the game. Two weeks to prepare its protection for a defense that can make the guy you expect to rush drop while somebody you weren't expecting comes screaming through the gap. And two weeks to decide what kind of game TCU wants Baylor to have to play. That's the part I'm looking forward to.

Baylor just showed TCU exactly how it wants to win.

Now TCU gets two weeks to decide whether it's going to let them.

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