{"id":131405,"date":"2025-08-09T09:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T09:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/131405\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T09:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T09:43:10","slug":"college-football-preview-2025-baylor-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/131405\/","title":{"rendered":"College Football Preview 2025: Baylor Bears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>2024 Recap<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After back-to-back losing campaigns, including just a 3-9 record in 2023, head coach Dave Aranda likely felt his seat getting warmer entering 2024. He was able to cool it off by leading Baylor to an 8-5 record this past season. The Bears\u2019 offense was the biggest catalyst for their success, placing among the 25 highest-graded units in the nation. That group should remain a strength in 2025, thanks to the return of quarterback Sawyer Robertson and a terrific duo of running backs in Bryson Washington and Dawson Pendergrass. Aranda will need to fix a defense that placed just 101st in EPA per pass for his program to take the next step, though.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Biggest Strength: Potentially the best backfield in the Big 12<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sawyer Robertson is one of the better quarterbacks in the Big 12, placing fifth in the conference with a 74.8 PFF passing grade in 2024. He\u2019ll also have the conference\u2019s best running back unit to rely on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Biggest Weakness: Pass defense<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Baylor had issues with opposing passing attacks last year. The Bears ranked just 116th in team PFF coverage grade and 111th in team PFF pass-rush grade. Making matters worse is the fact that the Bears lost their top-two coverage defenders (Lorando Johnson and Devin Lemear) and both of their starting edge rushers, Steve Linton and Garmon Randolph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2024 Recap After back-to-back losing campaigns, including just a 3-9 record in 2023, head coach Dave Aranda likely&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":131406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-131405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114998162590590042","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}