Baylor’s offense took a massive leap forward in year two under Matt Rhule. Before digging into the statistics that show so, I’ll first provide a brief overview of the difference between the 2017 and 2018 offenses.
In 2017, the offense was primarily led by Zach Smith, a big armed but generally inaccurate QB. Furthermore, his primary receivers struggled with drops. Thus, even if a 7 yard pass on first down was open, it was risky to operate that way because the pass was relatively (compared to most offenses) likely to be inaccurate or dropped. Furthermore, this was compounded by the fact that Baylor had a woeful OL and could not run the ball.