Baylor football: 3 takeaways from tight win over West Virginia
By Phil Poling
3. Baylor has an elite QB, WVU doesn’t have one at all
If you want to be technical, yes, the WVU football team does have a handful of quarterbacks on their roster — just not one that can win them many games at the collegiate level. Austin Kendall doesn’t make his teammates better, he takes too many sacks — he simply doesn’t provide the requisite plays that a Division-I starter should.
He completed 20-of-39 passes against the Bears for a 205 yards. That’s just 5.3 yards per completion — not great. To be fair, he isn’t and hasn’t been getting much help from the ground game, but for an older player, you just expect him to be able to make something happen.
Kendall is now 3-4 in games that he’s played the majority of in 2019, and 1-3 in conference play. He was knocked out of the Iowa State game early, thrusting Jack Allison into action, so that loss doesn’t really reflect on him at all as he only threw one pass. But Kendall just can’t get it done under center. The Mountaineers’ defense forced three turnovers against Baylor, and WVU’s offense answered with zero points. It’s simply unacceptable.
Baylor doesn’t have an other-worldly defense, either. They allow just 19.1 points per game on the year, good enough for 19th in the country, but it’s not like they’re unbeatable. The West Virginia offense just didn’t have enough juice — and it starts and ends with Kendall.