By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation
Like a kid's game of keep away, the Oklahoma State Cowboys ran 101 plays on offense and had the ball for right at 41 ½ minutes in Saturday night's Big 12 opener at McLane Stadium.
And it was a strategy that seemed to work to perfection, keeping the explosive Baylor offense off the field and getting two red-zone chances in the fourth quarter to take the lead on the 16th-ranked Bears.
But a Baylor defense that should have been completely gassed was at its best in the fourth quarter, coming up with two stops inside the 5-yard line, getting a pair of turnovers and then putting the exclamation point on a 35-24 win with a sack on the final play.
"It was just amazing tonight to watch the guys play so hard," said Baylor head coach Jim Grobe, whose team improved to 4-0 overall. "At times, we missed coverages, we missed some line stunts once in a while. . . . When you stay out there as long as we did tonight and still have some juice left at the end of the game, that says a lot about the character of our defense."
The Bears' bend-but-don't-break defense gave up scoring drives of 6:56 and 7:14 and stopped the Cowboys (2-2, 0-1) on just eight of 20 third-down plays. But, they also forced four turnovers and came up with three red-zone stops.
"Just goes to show you what type of defense we are," junior nickel back Travon Blanchard said. "We are a very opportunistic defense. Whenever we have an opportunity to get the ball back - catch interceptions, punch the ball out - we want to take our chances."
None was any bigger than Blanchard's recovery of a Justice Hill fumble at the 1-yard line. It was originally ruled a 12-yard run to the 2, but was overturn on the review, giving Baylor the ball at its own 1 with 9:12 left and nursing a four-point lead.
"At the very last second, I thought about it, and I was able to get a good punch on it," Blanchard said. "And the next thing I know, I saw the ball rolling around. So, I just recovered it. They tried to tempo, and luckily the people in the press box or someone stopped it and reviewed it. That was a really big stop for our defense."
Baylor's offense, which had struggled for most of the second half, put together a championship drive at exactly the right moment.
Backed up to his own goal line, quarterback Seth Russell completed passes of 32 and 34 yards to Ishmael Zamora, a 23-yarder to Terence Williams and then capped the nine-play march with a touch 15-yard TD strike to Chris Platt.
"I was telling Coach, just give the ball, just let me try and distribute it around," said Russell, who was 18-of-28 for 387 yards and four touchdowns with one interception. "I was feeling good, our receivers were playing lights-out. Our offensive line was playing lights-out. I think maybe in the first quarter I got touched, but after that it was locked-down up front.
"But on that 99-yard drive, we knew we had to put in there. If we got the points, it was going to be game over, because the defense was going to shut them down."
It looked like the Bears would just punch it in after Williams got down to the 4 and Russell picked up three more on a keeper. But when the snap went between Russell and Williams on second-and-goal from the 1 for a 14-yard loss, Russell had to come up with some more magic with his second TD pass of the night to Platt.
"He's been pretty upset the last couple weeks. He had some big drops . . . he had been beating himself up about it," Russell said of Platt, who had three catches for a career-high 114 yards. "I just kept trying to encourage him. . . But he came out tonight, he came out firing and he did some great things like we knew he would. He stepped up big-time and made some big plays for us."
With leading receiver KD Cannon watching the second half in street clothes after suffering a pulled groin, the Bears got big nights from both Platt and Zamora, who came back from his three-game suspension to set career highs for catches (eight), yards (175) and touchdowns (two).
"Honestly, we knew Ish had potential," Grobe said. "I don't think he caught a lot of balls last year (nine for 132 yards and two TDs), but the coaches saw in spring practice and then I could see in our summer practices that he had a lot of talent. . . . He probably had some issues getting lined up split-wise from not having a lot of playing time so far. But, from a big-play standpoint, he was huge tonight."
Looking more crisp on an opening drive than they have all year, the Bears went 75 yards in seven plays and scored on a 23-yard run by Williams on a direct snap. That came just 1:38 into the game and put Baylor on top, 6-0.
But freshman kicker Connor Martin, filling in for suspended junior Chris Callahan, had to wait 95 minutes to connect on his first extra point as a college kicker. Play was suspended at 6:39 p.m. and didn't resume until 8:14.
"The thing I worried the most about was we had a rookie kicker who had to sit in that locker room for an hour and a half before he got to come out and kick the extra point," Grobe said. I didn't know what was going to happen when we did that. We even discussed going for two to take the pressure off him. But, he did great."
Martin was true on the first of his five extra-point kicks, pushing the lead to 7-0.
Baylor's defense got its first stop of the night, but Tony Nicholson fielded a punt inside his own 5 and then fumbled it, with Tanner Morgan recovering it at the 5. On the very next play, Hill punched it in to tie it at 7-7.
The Cowboys failed to capitalize on a Russell interception in the second quarter, with Ben Grogan missing a 44-yard field goal.
Baylor regained the lead with another quick strike, taking less than two minutes to cover 73 yards. The payoff was a 38-yard TD strike that was tipped by slot receiver Lynx Hawthorne and into the hands of Zamora, who sprinted into the end zone.
After OSU tied it up with a three-yard TD run by Rennie Childs, the Russell-to-Zamora connection struck again with another 38-yarder that gave the Bears a 21-14 lead at the break.
"I knew he was going to step up," Russell said of Zamora. "He's a great football player and he showed that tonight."
A game that was expected to be a high-scoring shootout looked like it might turn into one when OSU tied it up with a methodical 16-play, 75-yard drive to start the third quarter, capped by another three-yard run by Childs.
While it took the Cowboys more than seven minutes to go that distance, Baylor answered in 50 seconds. On second-and-10 from the 11, Russell hit a wide-open Platt, who toasted cornerback Ashton Lampkin for an 89-yard TD pass off a double move.
OSU looked like it would answer right back, digging out of a hole with a 21-yard pass to Jalen McCleskey on third-and-20 and driving from its own 13 to the Bears' 11. But Blanchard and Ira Lewis stopped Hill short on third-and-five, setting up a 28-yard Grogan field goal that made it a four-point game.
On the next series, Baylor went for it on fourth-and-one from its own 24, with Williams stopped short, giving the Cowboys a golden opportunity to take their first lead of the game.
Grobe said he wanted to punt the ball, but had inadvertently clicked his headset off, and offensive coordinator Kendal Briles opted to go for it.
"KB goes so fast," Grobe said, "that before I could run down and grab him, we had run the play."
That was when the defense came to the rescue, stopping Childs a yard short on fourth-and-2 from the 4, and then coming up with the big fumble recovery by Hill at the 1 on back-to-back series.
"If you can't take care of the ball, it doesn't do us any good to have you in there," OSU head coach Mike Gundy said of Hill, who rushed for 122 yards on 20 carries. "He's a freshman, I understand that, but he's got to learn to take care of the football."
After the 99-yard TD drive by the offense, the defense came up big again when Orion Stewart picked off a Mason Rudolph pass and returned it near midfield. And then with the Cowboys threatening again at the end of the game, defensive end Xavier Jones sacked the OSU quarterback for a nine-yard loss as the final seconds ticked off the clock.
"Whewww! That's it," said linebacker Taylor Young, who had 10 tackles and two QB hurries. "Thank you, it's over, let's move on. . . . After that last play, it was a big deal for me just to get in the shower. Everybody looked exhausted out there. Just seeing our team dig deep, that was a big deal for us."
Baylor goes back on the road to face Iowa State (1-3, 0-1) at 11 a.m. next Saturday, Oct. 1, in Ames, Iowa. The Cyclones picked up their first win under new coach Matt Campbell, blasting San Jose State, 44-10.
