In hindsight, it's easy to understand why people were so concerned about Baylor around this time two weeks ago.Seth Russell, the Bears' junior quarterback, had just suffered a season-ending neck injury the weekend before. At the time, Russell topped the FBS in quarterback rating—a lead he still holds—and had thrown 29 touchdowns in seven starts. His understudy, true freshman Jarrett Stidham, had tossed just 28 passes in his college career, period.
Crystal balls were adjusted accordingly, and Baylor, which had been the most dominant team in college football this year by a comfortable margin, checked in at sixth in the initial college playoff rankings last week. How could they be ranked any higher without seeing how Stidham would handle his first start, a Thursday night tilt against Bill Snyder's regimented and eternally pesky Kansas State Wildcats?The answer should have been evident long before Stidham Slapchopped the Wildcats' defense like a clump of bell peppers. It's a mantra, one that no one should forget so long as Art Briles is around to forge signal-callers: It does not matter who plays quarterback for Baylor.Commit this to memory, and then even if Stidham puts up another line like last week—23-of-33 passing, 419 passing yards, three touchdowns to zero interceptions—you won't be duped into hailing him as a superstar-in-the-making. To be fair, Stidham has the best chance to make good on that promise of any Baylor quarterback since Robert Griffin III. He is, in all likelihood, the most sought-after quarterback recruit to ever step foot on campus, a top five prospect with size and strength and even a little speed. More than any other Briles protégé, he possesses the natural ability to succeed outside the confines of the Bears' ruthlessly productive offense.
Master of Robotics, Art Briles, photographed here studying his latest creation. — Photo via Scott Sewell-USA TODAY Sports
The cruel beauty of Briles' machine, though, is that it churns out points with utter indifference toward whoever minds the controls. Since 2011, Baylor has finished outside the top 10 in points per play only once: last year, when they were 11th. Their three starting quarterbacks during that time—Griffin, Nick Florence, and Bryce Petty—never finished lower than 12th in the season-ending QBR rankings. Each year, they placed among the top 10 in passing yardage, and completed at least 61 percent of their throws. They all, at minimum, threw 22 more touchdowns than interceptions per season.
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Russell was well on his way to joining that fraternity. His 189.7 quarterback rating was .2 higher than Griffin's during his Heisman season, while his preposterous 29 touchdowns had already matched Petty's total from last year. (You can credit a healthy portion of Russell's TDs to Corey Coleman, who will smash the FBS single-season receiving touchdown mark before Thanksgiving, but still: Russell belongs.)What's come after, as much as his struggles in the NFL, points to a reappraisal of Griffin. His 2011 Heisman campaign remains the gold standard in Waco, and no amount of NFL failures can blight that, but the further we get from Griffin's magical year, the more obvious it becomes that the Bears' offensive dominance is primarily Briles' genius at work. While some NFL minds regarded Griffin as a player with the potential to revolutionize the quarterback position, the most charitable pre-draft comparison given to Florence, who owns Baylor's single-season passing record, was Joe Webb. (Florence ultimately chose to retire from football after his senior season.) Petty was a fourth-round pick, and even that had more to do with a bone-dry quarterback pool than his actual abilities. This season, Russell was down the list of prospects in his draft class even prior to his injury.Stidham may boast more pedigree than his predecessors, but he is functionally no different than any other signal caller Baylor could assimilate. Briles' system has succeeded in making the (extremely complicated) quarterback position a one-size-fits-all affair, because his schemes rely on concepts far more than individual talent. It's a remarkable achievement rivaled only by Chip Kelly's Oregon, and that era seems to have ended now that Marcus Mariota can't compensate for Mark Helfrich's coaching. Baylor is the ultimate football anomaly: a team for which the game's most indispensable position is worthy of the least concern.That system doesn't render Stidham impervious to rookie mistakes. He still has only one start to his name, after all, and Griffin's early years under Briles prove that even something this efficient can't totally account for inexperience. It's entirely possible that Stidham, and the Bears, do not make it out of the next three weeks—at home versus Oklahoma, then away to Oklahoma State and TCU—unscathed.Yet this week's artificially deflated lines—Baylor is somewhere between a two-and-a-half to three-point favorite, despite playing at home against an overmatched Sooners team—should be reason enough to dismiss the notion of Jarrett Stidham weighing down the Bears. Like his forbears and his eventual successors, he'll be outstanding, and he'll be outstanding in large part because Art Briles has safeguarded against any alternative. It's why the Bears will succeed so long as the venerable Texan stalks the sideline, and why none of his endless line of record-smashing automatons should ever again win the Heisman Trophy.It does not matter who plays quarterback for Baylor. That, more than anything else, is what makes Baylor great.
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