In September, Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades publicly laid out his preferences for his next head coach in an interview with the Waco Tribune. Baylor’s new head coach needed to have an exciting offensive identity, ties to the state of Texas, head coaching experience and had to be a CEO-type leader of the program.
In new hire Matt Rhule, he has a coach who doesn’t necessarily check all those boxes. But considering the state of Baylor’s team and roster, it was probably wiser to choose the best possible program-builder than the next-best Air Raid guy.
Rhule only needed three years to pull off a worst-to-first rebuild at Temple. His familiarity and passion for that school, one he’d coached at for six years before landing the head coaching job, had to help. How familiar is he with what he’s taking on at Baylor?
The challenge he’s inheriting with Baylor’s football team is indeed much different. From purely an on-field standpoint, this job comes with some difficult circumstances.
Baylor brings back at most 58 scholarship players from its 2016 team, though attrition should be expected in any coaching change. The depth issues were exposed over these past two months when Baylor finished with six consecutive losses in Big 12 play after starting 6-0. Interim coach Jim Grobe tried his best to keep everybody motivated and locked in, but these guys needed more bodies.
Rhule inherits good young talent at running back and receiver, and most of the offensive line is returning, but Zach Smith is the only scholarship quarterback coming back next season, and he was a true freshman this fall. On defense, seven of the 11 starters from the Bears' regular-season finale against West Virginia are expected to return.
Those players are still deeply loyal to Art Briles and his departing assistant coaches, but this is also an opportunity for a clean slate. Rhule shouldn’t have too difficult a time winning them over, because bottom line, those players want to get back to winning.
The issue here is a little more long term, because Baylor lost a lot of talent when more than half of its 2016 signing class bailed to attend other schools this summer. To mitigate some of the damage that could do in the future, Rhule and his staff cannot afford to end up with a lot of misses in their 2017 class.
The fact Baylor’s staff stopped recruiting for the past six months is a disadvantage Rhule must address and overcome immediately. Baylor needs to take a full class, and there is only one commit on board -- three-star defensive back Jalen Pitre. Recruits in this state don’t know anything about Rhule, so suggesting he and his new staff have a ton of work to do in the eight weeks before signing day is a bit of an understatement.
The ability of Briles’ staff to find and evaluate talent in the state of Texas is one of the key reasons Baylor won back-to-back Big 12 championships in 2013 and 2014. They built that strength the only way you can: Time. The previous Baylor staff logged a combined 140 years of coaching experience in the state of Texas.
Because Rhule has zero years of experience in the Lone Star State, he’ll have to surround himself with coaches who have some cachet in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas. And he needs to get those coaches hired and out on the road recruiting as soon as possible.
The Texan thing is important. The relationships with high school coaches here are important. But it doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker. Kevin Sumlin wasn’t born in Texas. Gary Patterson had never worked in the state before joining TCU. Mack Brown is as Texan as can be these days, and he came from North Carolina.
If Rhule can quickly get Baylor’s roster and recruiting back in good long-term shape, where he came from won’t really matter.