Three Baylor Bears who could give Texas Tech uniforms this Saturday in Lubbock

At first glance, it looks like the Texas Tech football team will be a heavy favorite to beat Baylor this weekend in Lubbock. After all, the Red Raiders are 5-1 this season and 3-0 in the Big 12, while Baylor is just 2-4 overall and 0-3 in the conference.

ESPN.com’s matchup forecast gives Texas a 66.8% chance of emerging victorious on Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, FanDuel.com lists Tech as a 6.5-point favorite in this matchup.

Certainly this is a coming together of teams and programs going in opposite directions. The Red Raiders are enjoying their best start to the season since Joey McGuire took over as head coach. Meanwhile, the Bears have yet to win a game against a team from a power conference and they only have one win against an FBS program, Air Force.

Despite all of this, Texas Tech should be on guard this weekend. That’s because not only is Baylor playing to save its season, but the Bears will also be playing to save head coach Dave Aranda’s job the rest of the year. That could make them a dangerous force.

Additionally, Baylor played some good teams all the way to the end this year. Had it not been for a miraculous Hail Mary pass on the final play of regulation time and then a goal-line fumble in overtime, the Bears probably would have beaten Colorado in Boulder. And when BYU went to Waco, Baylor battled back from a 28-7 first-half deficit and had a chance to win the game with a touchdown in the final two minutes before a game-winning interception to make it 34-28 -defeat achieved.

Of course, the last time the Bears came to Lubbock, they pulled off a surprise the night Pat Mahomes II walked into the Texas Tech Ring of Honor. On this night in October 2022, both teams entered the game 4-3 overall and 2-2 in Big 12 play.

Unfortunately, Baylor played its best game of the season while Tech played its worst. The result was a 45-17 Baylor game that spoiled the Mahomes celebration.

The point is, despite Baylor’s struggles this year, Tech can’t afford to take this game for granted. The Red Raiders haven’t exactly blown out Big 12 opponents, and Baylor has yet to fully prevail in any of its losses this season.

Additionally, Baylor has some top talent that could be a problem for Texas Tech. So let’s take a look at three bears that Red Raider fans should know about.

One player who will be particularly motivated to play well this weekend is Baylor QB Sawyer Robertson. He is a Lubbock native and graduate of Coronado High School. He returns to his hometown to attend his hometown university, which did not recruit him out of high school.

In the 2021 class, there were two high school QBs with ties to Lubbock that Matt Wells’ coaching staff could have targeted. This year, Wells and Co. went all out to acquire Behren Morton from Eastland, Texas, a four-star recruit who was born in Lubbock and spent his childhood on the South Plains.

That meant Robertson didn’t get much, if any, love from his hometown university. In fact, he didn’t even receive a scholarship offer from the Red Raiders.

Both Robertson and Morton were four-star recruits according to 247Sports.com. Robertson was ranked as the No. 16 QB in the class and Morton was the No. 19 QB in the class. In other words, they were essentially equals as recruits, but Tech clearly favored Morton at the time.

Of course, the employees who overlooked Robertson are no longer at Tech. So does he still have some dislike for the Red Raiders? Who knows. But there is no doubt that his team will want to play well when he returns to the 806.

This is Robertson’s second year in Waco after a year at Mississippi State, where he played for Mike Leach until Leach passed away at the end of this season. He didn’t start as the Bears’ starting quarterback this year, but took over the role when Dequan Finn, who transferred to Toldeo, was injured early in the season.

Robertson is just 1-3 since taking over. He is completing 59.2% of his passes and has scored nine touchdowns on three picks. Averaging 244.5 yards per game, he is an efficient player who has yet to take over a game and lead his team to victory. However, he would like to do that against the hometown school that didn’t recruit him out of high school, so look for him to try his best this week.

This year, the Texas Tech secondary has struggled with consistency, due in large part to injuries to key players. Baylor’s top wide receiver Josh Cameron will have to be kept under control on Saturday.

This year, Cameron leads Baylor with 18 catches, 277 yards and four touchdowns. Although these numbers are relatively low, he averages 15.4 yards per catch, proving he is a major threat.

This season he has been a godsend. He had fewer than 15 yards in three games. But in the other three he scored at least 59.

That includes his great game against BYU. That day in Waco, Cameron caught seven passes for 125 yards and two scores.

As a redshirt junior, the 6-foot-1 pass catcher is on pace to break his career high, which he set in 2022 with 28 catches and 386 yards. He certainly has the ability to put opposing defenses on alert, and Tech will certainly know where he is on every snap.

The good news is that the Red Raiders will likely be as healthy in the secondary as they have been all year. The team’s top corner, Brayln Lux, is not listed on the injury report for the first time all season, and the only regular contributor listed as “out” or “questionable” for Saturday is safety Chapman Lewis, who has a struggling with a hamstring injury.

Hopefully the Red Raiders can keep up with the Bears receivers on Saturday. That’s because Baylor is one of the worst rushing teams in the Big 12. So the goal must be to slow down Baylor’s passing attack.

Another Bear coming to town this weekend who will be familiar to Texas Tech fans is Steve Linton. The sixth-grader played outside linebacker for the Red Raiders last year, but will now be on the opponent’s sideline for Saturday’s contest.

He disappointed in 2023 after transferring to Tech from Syracuse. He recorded just 22 tackles and 3.0 sacks in eight games, failing to live up to the offseason hype that surrounded his arrival.

However, he had an impact game. Against Baylor in Waco, he recorded three sacks and two forced fumbles in the Red Raiders’ blowout win. That obviously impressed the Baylor coaching staff, which brought him in after he and Texas Tech parted ways last offseason.

He has already recorded 13 tackles and 2.0 sacks this year. But like last year, most of his productivity came in one game. Against Colorado, Linton had five tackles and 2.0 sacks. Other than that, he wasn’t nearly as influential.

While Linton hasn’t proven to be a consistently disruptive force for Baylor so far, he has the physical skills and athleticism to be a problem for the Tech offensive line, a unit that has been marginal at best this year. If Linton is motivated to show the Red Raiders that they should have kept him, then he could be a problem when he returns to Jones Stadium.