Box Score | Postgame Notes | Postgame Quotes

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

?SAN ANTONIO – Even one of his top threats drops the occasional pass, as both Denzel Mims and Jalen Hurd did in Baylor's 37-20 win over UTSA Saturday night at the Alamodome, Charlie Brewer shrugs it off and goes right back to them.

?"Nobody's perfect, by all means," said Brewer, who was 23-of-34 for 328 yards and three touchdowns in helping the Bears get off to a 2-0 start after losing their first eight last season. "I missed a ton of stuff tonight. But, I have utmost respect in those guys and their ability."

?He should. 

Hurd (8-136) and Mims (8-133) both had 100-yard receiving days, Hurd's first as a Bear since transferring from Tennessee and sitting out last season. 

?Comparing his first 100-yard receiving game to the 11 100-yard days he had as a running back with the Vols, Hurd said, "A lot less toll on my body, so I'm pretty happy about that."

?It was Mims' sixth 100-yard receiving game, which ranks as the 11th-best total in program history. He has caught at least two passes in 14 straight games, dating back to last season. 

?"We just try to come in and take what we can. We don't ever try to force anything," Mims said, "because when you force things, they don't seem to go so good. We just try to take what we can get."

?In the 55-27, season-opening win over Abilene Christian, it was more the running game that carried the Bears, with both John Lovett and JaMycal Hasty topping the 100-yard mark. This time, with UTSA (0-2) stacking the line of scrimmage, Baylor could muster just 91 yards on 31 carries (2.9-yard average) and struggled in short-yardage sand goal-line situations. 

?"That's a good football team," coach Matt Rhule said of the Roadrunners, who handed Baylor a 17-10 loss at McLane Stadium last year. "They have edge, they're tough, they're big and they're physical. They held us under 100 yards (rushing), which is unacceptable."

?Because of that, the Bears had to probably throw it more than Rhule would like. Including a 36-yard end-around pass from receiver Jared Atkinson back to Brewer, Baylor hit 27 of 41 passes for 403 yards. 

?Still, Rhule was not pleased with the number of dropped passes. 

?"To me, the story was more about our ability to catch the football," he said. "If we catch the ball just a little bit better, then that's a lot more yards throwing and maybe opens a few more things up."

?Mims said it always bothers him when he drops a pass, "but I can't let it affect my game."

?"I I just have to keep going and just go to the next play," he said. 

?Hurd, who converted from running back to receiver when he transferred to Baylor, said he had one drop Saturday night,"and that' won't happen again, for sure. It happens, you just have to move on from it, but it won't happen again."

?Brewer, getting his sixth consecutive start and splitting series with NC State transfer Jalan McClendon through the first half, engineered a nine-play, 50-yard drive on the Bears' opening series and beat an all-out blitz on third-and-goal with a three-yard TD pass to Hasty out of the backfield. 

?After Temple transfer Derrek Thomas intercepted a Cordale Grundy pass over the middle on UTSA's next play from scrimmage, the Bears extended the lead to 10-0 on the first of three field goals by Connor Martin.
 
?The Roadrunners answered with field goals of 47 and 46 yards by Jared Sackett to tighten things up at 10-6.

?Baylor was pinned down at its own 3-yard line when freshman Tyquan Thornton called a fair catch on the ensuing kickoff and dropped it. In the new kickoff rule, a clean fair catch brings it out to the 25, but you have to take it from that point when you drop it. 

?All the Bears did was drive 97 yards in seven plays, with Brewer getting it started with a 16-yard run out of his own end zone. A big hitter to Mims nearly went for a touchdown as the receiver tip-toed down the left sideline, but it was brought back by a holding penalty down the field by fellow receiver Chris Platt. 

?Four plays later, Mims hauled in a 22-yard TD pass from Brewer over the single coverage of cornerback Avery Jackson for a 17-6 lead. 

?"He had a one-on-one right there, and I just kind of threw it up, on his back shoulder, and let him go get it," Brewer said. 
?Mims called it a "beautiful pass." 

?"When I turned around, I wasn't really expecting it," he said. "But it was there, so I had to go make the play."

?Trying to "go for the jugular" at that point, the Bears caught UTSA sleeping with an onside kick that Jalen Pitre recovered near midfield. 

?"I told our guys going into this game that we were going to empty everything we had," Rhule said. "We did (the onside kick) because we thought it was there. . . . I told the defense,'Hey, we're going surprise onside. And if we don't get it, I expect you guys to be excited to go play.'''

?On the very next play, Atkinson took an end-around handoff from running back Trestan Ebner, rolled to his right and found Brewer wide open for a 36-yard pass down to the Roadrunners' 15. In last year's 38-9 blowout of Kansas on the road, Atkinson tossed a 20-yarder to Brewer. 

?"That's just something we kind of always have in," Rhule said. "UTSA was in man-to-man. And when you're in man-to-man, the only guy you don't have a man for is the quarterbacks. It's just of a play we sort of knew we had there."

?The Bears had to settle for a 32-yard field goal by Martin, extending the lead to 20-6. And they had a chance to put some more points on the board in the last minute, but UTSA came up with a big sack and fumble by McClendon that led to a touchdown with just nine seconds left in the half. 

?McClendon was trying to hit Mims down the right sideline, "but you can't get mad at him," he said. "It was definitely a touchdown (if he could have got it out there)." All of a sudden, it was back to a one-score game, 20-13. 

?Keeping the team on the field for a few minutes before going into a shared locker room, Rhule told them, "Boy, aren't we lucky that this happened to us?"

?"It was just an opportunity to find out if we could battle back from adversity," he said. "When you play a team that's tough and has moxie like (UTSA), it's not about panicking, it's not about getting complacent, it's about playing. I told them at the half, I'd probably normally take a knee. We thought we had a shot down the sideline to Mims, and we did. We sack-fumbled, and they went out there and scored, and I'm just proud of our guys to not quit, to not complain, to keep playing."

?What the Bears did was just go out and dominate the third quarter with two long offensive series, going up 27-13 when Brewer avoided a sack, scrambled to his left and found Hurd near the front pylon for a seven-yard TD pass. 

?"It's funny, because we practiced that exact same play, I think it was after just a long day of camp," Hurd said. "We just kind of did that little scramble drill in the end zone, where he throws it low and outside. It was like late one night, at around 10 o'clock. It's funny how it just shows up in a game like that. He put it exactly how we practiced it and what did in the indoor that one night."

?Baylor answered a fourth-quarter touchdown by UTSA with another Martin field goal and a one-yard TD plunge by Hasty to put it away. 

?"There's a lot of things that we missed on tonight," said Brewer, who took all of the second-half snaps. "There's a lot of opportunities where we could have made some big plays. We were close to doing it, and shot ourselves in the foot a little bit. We have to get that corrected this week."

?The Bears return home to host Duke (2-0) at 2:30 p.m. next Saturday at McLane Stadium in an FS1 national broadcast. After opening with a 34-14 win over Army, the Blue Devils rolled over Northwestern, 21-7, on the road.
 

---