By james art Baylor Bear Insider
LUBBOCK, TX – When Texas Tech scheduled the Baylor Bears for its 2024 homecoming game, the Red Raiders certainly didn’t plan on making it such a nice homecoming for Sawyer Robertson.
Growing up a stone’s throw from Jones AT&T Stadium, the Baylor redshirt junior quarterback from Lubbock Coronado High School threw for a career-high 274 yards and five touchdowns in leading the Bears to a convincing 59-35 victory Saturday in front of a sellout crowd of 60,229.
“It means a lot,” Robertson said, “obviously my family and friends are up there in the stands who normally can’t come watch me play. But other than that, it was just another game… Disaster ushers in. Obviously our backs are against the wall, the record isn’t where we want it to be, but our mentality is to go 1-0 every week.
The Bears (3-4, 1-3) snapped a three-game losing streak to knock Tech (5-2, 3-1) and former Baylor assistant coach Joey McGuire off the top of the Big 12 standings.
“Today was extremely disappointing,” said McGuire, Tech’s third-year head coach who was an assistant coach at Baylor from 2017-21. “It’s disappointing to go out, after a bye where we had a lot of momentum. And to go out and get beat at home like that. You don’t want to lose a game, but man, I’m very proud of the way we play at home, and we played really bad tonight.”
Another West Texas native, middle linebacker Matt Jones of Odessa Perman led Baylor’s defensive attack with nine tackles, two pass breakups and a sack in his own return. Except for one drive in the third quarter, when he had 49 yards on four carries, Tech running back Taj Brooks had just 76 yards on 21 carries.
“It feels great,” Jones said. “We’ve lost the last three, it’s been a tough start. I don’t know how many people I said, ‘Man, it feels good to win!’ I missed that feeling.”
Head coach Dave Arandatrying to make the best of the raucous celebration in the next room in Baylor’s locker room, said “a lot of frustration was let out.”
“It’s just such a testing (time) — to not live up to expectations and to put in the effort, to not tap into what you want and need — to taste success gives you confidence,” Aranda said. “I think everything you saw today has been building all season. I think some success was necessary. The boys began to believe.’
That success came early and often, with the Bears leading 24-14 at halftime. And when the start of the second half didn’t go as planned, the Red Raiders scored on a 31-yard touchdown run by Brooks to make it a three-point game, Baylor responded with 28 unanswered points to put this one away.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Aranda said. “When you do that, it gives you the belief that you can do it. I think before that… as much as you do it in practice, as much as you do it in the second fight of fall camp, it’s another thing to do in a game when there are TV cameras on and the lights are bright and you are out there on someone else’s turf. That was big.”
Saturday’s game continued to showcase the bond between Robertson and the redshirt junior wide receiver Josh Cameronwho had six catches for 75 yards and three touchdowns in his career. A former walk-on, Cameron became the first Baylor receiver with seven TD receptions in a season since Tyquan Thornton (10) in 2021.
“For him to throw the ball to me, I want to have his back,” Cameron said of Robertson, who was 21 of 32 for 274 yards and five touchdowns. “Basically, whenever the ball is in the air, it’s my ball. It’s nobody else’s ball. It’s just the relationship we have. I want to make him right at all times.”
Robertson, who has thrown 13 touchdown passes over the past four games, said the trust between him and Cameron “continues to build.”
“Like I said, 50/50 balls aren’t really 50/50 balls with him,” Robertson said. “It feels good as a quarterback. And then when he plays a game like that, you see some of the other guys like Hal (Pressley) and Monari (Baldwin) start to get into it. I’m so proud of all of them in this whole room.”
As important as the passing game was, the most promising offensive development was a rushing attack that exploded for a season-high 255 yards.
Redshirt freshman running back Bryson Washington led the way with a season-high 116 yards and two touchdowns on 10 carries (11.6-yard average), but the Bears averaged 7.7 per attempt as a team and outgained the Red Raiders, 255-149, on the ground.
“It gets easier when you run the ball. I think people have to respect that,” Aranda said.
Baylor brought back an old friend — the wide-area run that was a staple of former coordinator Jeff Grimes’ offense the previous three years.
“We turned on the stretch game or the wide zone game in the bye week,” Aranda said. “And it’s interesting that we’ve been working with this for so long, or it seems so long. We brought it in and nobody knew what to do. So we had to learn it again. But you saw, there were a few times when we had a stretch game and we were able to crush the defense.
“We’ll see people adjust to that, but being able to have both runs that are this way and runs that are that way helps our line.”
In fact, it was the run game that got the Bears going. Washington broke a run around left end and appeared to hit the pylon for a 45-yard touchdown, but the play was reviewed and determined to have gone outside the 1-yard line.
No problem, one play later, Washington made its way into the end zone for a 7-0 lead.
Special teams also played a huge role in the first half as Baylor took a double-digit lead into the locker room.
After Tech answered Washington’s score with a 12-yard TD strike from Florida’s Behren Morton to Caleb Douglas, Cameron completely turned the momentum with a 73-yard punt return that set up Washington’s second TD on a short yardage.
“When I’m down, I know I have room to make a move and just keep going. And that’s what happened,” Cameron said. “I always want to thank my blockers, everybody on the (kick return team). I couldn’t have done it without them. Just shout out to all those guys.”
On the ensuing kickoff, East Carolina transfer Rara Dilworth recovered a fumble return by Tech’s Drae McCray at the Red Raiders’ 19-yard line. But the Bears had to settle for a 31-yard field goal Isaiah Hankins which pushed the lead to 17-7 with 10:30 left in the half.
Douglas scored again, this time from tight end Jalin Conyers, who moved to the line of scrimmage before dropping back and throwing to a Tech receiver for a 20-yard touchdown.
With just under two minutes remaining and holding all three timeouts, Baylor drove 75 yards in nine plays and scored on Robertson’s five-yard TD pass to Cameron in the back of the end zone. That play came after a big first-down drive with a 19-yard pass to the tight end Michael Triggwho was called for offensive pass interference two plays earlier.
And then, as Tech pulled away to cut the deficit to 24-21 on Brooks’ 31-yard TD in the third quarter, Robertson went back to Cameron for a 26-yard pickup and found him for an 11-yard TD that started the 28 points.
Robertson hit Pressley for a 35-yard touchdown and added fourth-quarter TD passes of 24 yards to Baldwin and a 12-yarder to Cameron that made it 52-21 with 9:41 left in the game.
“I think we’re getting better every game,” Robertson said. “From Air Force to Colorado to BYU, there’s never been a big drop. It just piled up and piled up and piled up, especially with a (first-year offensive coordinator Jake Spavital). This is his first year here. That’s normal, I’d guess. But for it to click today, we left a lot of plays out there. . lots of points left on the board.”
Sandwiched between two late goals by the Red Raiders, the Toledo transfer Dequan Finn saw his first game action since Week 2 against Utah and scored on a 34-yard TD run.
Returning home for its next two games, Baylor will host Oklahoma State (3-4, 0-4) for Homecoming at 2:30 p.m. next Saturday at McLane Stadium in a game streamed on ESPN+. The Cowboys dropped their fourth straight, falling on the road to No. 13 BYU, 38-35, Friday night in Provo.