13 Comments

  1. Andrew

    Aranda is pretty good at seeing his personnel & then making his schemes fit was he has. His proposed OC from Utah does the same. The plus athletes that are on the roster will still need development, but it’s a better fit than others. Recruiting wise, he needs to keep the Texas trio in place to ensure he gets to talk to the coaches in Texas he needs to. The players on D are used to much more complex schemes, which should help him implement his own exotic blitzes & looks.

    The 2020 season will be much more interesting than previously thought. We’ll see how his 1st year shakes out, but his floor should be 6 or 7 wins as long as the O can score more than last year.

    • ianaboyd

      Disagree, I think this could go horribly. We’ve seen lots of well respected zone blitz coaches join the B12 and get wrecked. It’s almost an annual tradition.

      • Mike

        Since Baylor loses 9 of 11 starters on D, the “get wrecked” prediction is not very risky.
        I’m sure Herman felt better about this Baylor hire than he did when they hired Rhule. Did you see that video?
        The competition between former roomies should create the next level of anxiety for both guys/teams. Sic ’em Bears.
        Keep up the good work Ian.

        • ianaboyd

          I’ve heard about the Herman reaction to the Rhule hire, pretty hilarious. Herman used to be all about the Dave Aranda style of D and it was Aranda that tipped him off about Todd Orlando.

          Since then, Texas has been destroyed on defense in the B12 and Herman zagged hard by bringing in Chris Ash to install a very different approach. Whether that will work or not, I don’t know, but I think Herman’s thoughts on that style of D have changed.

        • ianaboyd

          I think this is more likely to go horribly than many other options. That he immediately went for Andy Ludwig was eye opening, even though it didn’t work out.

      • Andrew

        Whomever his DC is, they’ll have to try to keep the 3-3-5 scheme. At LSU his preferred base was 3-4. I doubt he’ll completely disregard what ended up being a solid D specific to the B12. My only thought is how he’ll either tweak the 3-3-5 with his ideas. After all, the D Rhule & Snow brought to BU are in books which are technically property of BU. If he’s as intelligent as they say, he’ll comb through them & glean a few overall concepts/ideas that will help. Additionally, he doesn’t have the caliber of athlete he had at LSU.

        • ianaboyd

          Up front, Aranda can get up to all kinds of productive things at Baylor. The problem is on the perimeter. Like Grinch or Orlando, his particular expertise has often been in swarming spread run schemes and attacking protections in the spread passing game. It’s all up front. On the back end at Wisconsin they played a ton of off man coverage and then at LSU that changed to press-man because they had a never-ending supply of 1st round CBs.

          He needs to diversify how he shores things up on the back end.

  2. Ryan

    Why does it seem like you’re trying to rewrite history and act like Grinch’s first year wasn’t successful in the Big 12?

    • ianaboyd

      I don’t know, which part of this piece creates that impression?

      I’d say it was solid with potential down the line.

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