Radio sideline reporter Jed Drenning provides periodic commentary on the Mountaineer football program for WVUsports.com. Be sure to follow him on Twitter @TheSignalCaller.
 
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Ah, the connective tissue of college football.
 
If you're around this sport long enough, you start to recognize that almost everything – and everyone – is somehow linked. Whether you're playing, coaching or merely broadcasting, the ties always seem to surface. 
 
What might you call a gridiron version of that Kevin Bacon game? 
 
Six Degrees of Kevin Koken?
 
When I played at Samford University in the late 1980s, we faced a Tennessee-Martin squad with a salty defense that featured a strongside linebacker with an intense pre-snap gaze and a high football IQ.
 
His name was Ron Roberts, and he's now the defensive coordinator for the Baylor Bears.
 
In the early 1990s at Glenville State, before putting his own stamp on the scheme, Rich Rodriguez hired Mike Springston to install the run and shoot offense for us. Coach Springston's previous stops included time on staff at UTEP. The Miners' starting right tackle at the time was a guy with limited ability but a sharp mind. As players with that skill set often do, that canny offensive tackle pursued a coaching career. 
 
A dozen or so jobs later, Jeff Grimes is now the offensive coordinator at Baylor. 
 
Grimes was coaching the offensive line for Colorado in 2008 when the Buffs faced West Virginia in Boulder and the offensive line at Auburn a year later when the Tigers hosted the Mountaineers on the Plains. He was coaching the LSU offensive line in 2017 when Neal Brown's Troy team pulled the upset of the year in Baton Rouge.
 
That LSU defense that was bested by Brown's Trojans, of course, was coordinated by Dave Aranda – now Baylor's head coach. 
 
But the connections don't stop there.
 
Aranda is a former graduate assistant under Mike Leach (Texas Tech 2000-2002) while Brown of course was coached by Leach as a receiver at Kentucky. Technically speaking, that means Saturday's game at McLane Stadium will be a showdown between two Leach disciples – but don't expect what you see between the lines to reflect that. It was plenty windy the day these two acorns fell from the Air Raid tree. 
 
Unlike "The Pirate," who is now swinging his sword in Starkville, Mississippi, Aranda and Brown abide by an old-school, blue-collar approach, steeped in a belief that all three phases of the game matter. Sure, these two earned their stripes as hotshot coordinators on opposite sides of the ball (Brown as the play caller dialing up multiple 4,000-yard passing seasons and Aranda as the architect of various top-10 scoring defenses) but as head coaches both have adopted a big-picture attitude toward running a program, committing ample consideration and resources to both sides of the ball and to special teams. 
 
Despite Brown's offensive pedigree, for example, he appreciates the value of an elite defense.
 
"There's a formula for us to be able to win big here," Brown said recently. "I think that's built around playing great defense. I think that fits us."
 
And Brown's defense appears to be in capable hands. Jordan Lesley has come a long way since being featured on the hit Netflix documentary series "Last Chance U" as the defensive coordinator for East Mississippi Community College. 
 
Last year, Lesley superintended a West Virginia unit that led all Power 5 schools in Total Defense. This year, that defense has grabbed the baton and kept running as they pace the Big 12 in Tackles for Loss (8.8/game) and Sacks (tied at 3.2/game) while allowing the lowest yards per rush in the league (2.5).
 
On the other side, Aranda's defensive roots haven't prevented him from demanding offensive excellence. After Baylor stumbled last year to 23 points per game (the Bears lowest output since 2009), he didn't stand pat. 
 
Aranda unplugged the BU offense, blew on it, then plugged it back in. He parted ways with offensive coordinator Larry Fedora and brought in Grimes, his former colleague on that LSU staff. Grimes arrived in Waco on the heels of engineering a BYU offense that averaged 43.5 points per game and earned him a spot as a finalist for the Broyles Award, given annually to the nation's top assistant coach. 
 
The improvement to the Bears' offense has been immediate. Baylor transformed from a pass-happy team that threw the ball 37 times a game into a more deliberate squad that -- in just the first three games of 2021 – rushed for more yards (970) than in all of last season (813). Nearly 24% of BU's runs from scrimmage have been gains of 10-plus yards, and they enter Saturday's matchup averaging 37 points per game, led by Abram Smith (tied nationally for the most runs of that 10-plus yard variety with 19) and interception-free QB Gerry Bohanon, the Big 12 leader in total touchdowns with a dozen (seven passing, five rushing).
 
The Bears aren't always pretty, but they are always gritty. And that's not a bug in Grimes' offense -- it's a feature. A violent element on which you can bank.
 
His system even has an acronym. I'll let him explain.
 
"RVO stands for Reliable Violent Offense," Grimes said. "Those two words, reliable and violent, I think are the two things that are critical to an offense being able to succeed. Reliable meaning you're consistently good, you can be trusted, you can do things the right way all the time."

The violence, according to Grimes, comes in multiple forms.

"The way you have an opportunity to win the game is to go out there and play with violence and play with an edge, whether that means running the football downfield, throwing the football down the field, and it means various things for various positions." 

The Baylor offense is a 60-minute eye exam for defenses. The Bears motion constantly and do more shifting than Jerry Reed in "Smokey and the Bandit." As Grimes points out, this is all accomplished while keeping things simple for those executing the scheme. 

"Appearing complex in your presentation – shifts and motions and multiple motions – presents different pictures to the defense," Grimes told Dave Campbell's Texas Football last summer. 

"We're an attacking, multiple formation offense that runs a few plays a lot of ways with as much misdirection as anyone in the country."

One of those few plays they run a lot of ways is wide zone. Also called outside zone or stretch, this is a horizontal displacement concept that creates multiple possibilities for creases as the offensive line works laterally instead of vertically, allowing the running back to read the flow of his blockers and find a gap. Packaging it so many different ways allows Baylor, by a considerable margin, to run wide zone more than any other play in its arsenal. In fact, Grimes' system is predicated on it.

Sure, the shiny toy BYU showcased was quarterback Zach Wilson (the No. 2 overall pick in April's NFL Draft by the New York Jets), but only two FBS schools utilized wide zone last year with more frequency than Grimes' attack. And to further facilitate the transition in Waco, Grimes brought with him Cougars offensive line coach Eric Mateos to help install and orchestrate the scheme. 

Anchoring his plan so heavily to one, well-polished concept puts an array of complementary plays at Grimes' disposal, from play-action deep balls to bootlegs and RPOs.

"The wide zone is something that I believe in," Grimes has said. "I've been fortunate to have been in a lot of different offensive systems and the wide zone is one that has been the most consistent play in the NFL for the past 20-25 years."

He's not wrong. 

Nearly a quarter century ago, in Super Bowl XXXII, the Denver Broncos deployed the wide zone to upset the Green Bay Packers. Without a single player along the offensive line tipping the scales at 300 pounds, Denver beat Green Bay at the point of attack, wearing down 340-pound nose guard Gilbert Brown and neutralizing Hall of Fame edge rusher Reggie White. The Broncos offensive line paved the way for Terrell Davis, migraine and all, to churn out 157 rushing yards and three scores against the Packers to earn MVP honors. 

This game was the crown jewel of the storied career of Denver's offensive line coach, the late Alex Gibbs -- the most celebrated shepherd of the zone blocking scheme at the pro level. Gibbs, a former WVU defensive assistant on Bobby Bowden's staff in the early 1970s (another connection) before leaving to coach offensive line for the first time at Ohio State under Woody Hayes, was always quick to point out he didn't invent the concept. Multiple NFL coaches influenced zone blocking running games through the years, even Vince Lombardi himself back in the 60s, who called the approach "area blocking." 

In the game of football, a concept doesn't stand such a test of time without being adaptable. Grimes says the wide zone checks that box.

"It is a play that is versatile with different formations and personnel groups and is something that is very consistent and allows you to stay on schedule and doesn't allow for a lot of negative yardage plays and keeps you on schedule as an offense and a play caller."

In principle, minimizing negative yardage plays is baked into the equation as the stretch play forces defenses to charge through a gap at a laterally moving target. But you'd better make your penetration count. If a defender misfires, he''ll look like a carnival barker trying to guess someone's weight, desperately reaching to make an arm tackle as a door is opened for the runner to cut back into a crease and find daylight. 

That being said, with the proper timing and the right plan, disruption is possible against this crew. Baylor cruised through its early-season schedule with negligible leakage in the run game, allowing just 13 tackles for loss in the first three games, overmatching Texas State, Texas Southern and Kansas. In the Bears last two contests, however, their ground game has been knocked backwards 18 times, including 10 TFLs by Oklahoma State in BU's loss in Stillwater last week.  

So how did the Cowboys do it? They leveraged the football, shed blocks and maintained gap integrity, in effect helping them outnumber the Bears in the run game. At certain times, Oklahoma State rolled the dice with cover zero and literally did outnumber Baylor. 

This was the case in a third-and-2 situation in the second quarter when Cowboys safety Jason Taylor blew uncontested through B-gap, right past the double team on defensive tackle Sione Asi to wrap up Bears running back Trestan Ebner for a loss.

Two plays later, the Bears went with the wide zone again, this time into the boundary with running back Abram Smith. OSU tackle Brendan Evers held his own against the double team to string it out and linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez scraped to force the cutback into his help on the inside. Baylor wide receiver Josh Fleeks attempted a push-crack technique (pushing vertical at the cornerback then cracking down) on Cowboys safety Kolby Harvell-Peel but failed, allowing Harvell-Peel to help defensive tackle Israel Antwine fill the cutback lane. OSU's technique across the board put the runner in a vice grip, allowing Smith no escape hatch. He lowered his shoulder and managed to squeeze just two yards out of it. 

Zip ahead to the third quarter and you'll see Oklahoma State dial up another cover zero look on third-and-short near midfield, countering the Bears' 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends) with a nine-man box and single coverage on the wideouts split to each side. The Cowboys mugged things up with defenders aligned in both A-gaps. OSU's resources against the run proved too much for Baylor to account for as linebacker Devin Harper was left clear to take Smith down for no gain.

That was great news for the Cowboys until one play later when Aranda pulled the trigger on fourth down and the Bears rewarded him with a 55-yard touchdown run by Smith. It's worth noting for those who haven't watched Baylor much this year that they do that – a lot.

Driven by analytics, the Bears lead the Big 12 with nine fourth-down conversions (WVU is No. 2 with eight successful conversions and was three-for-three in last year's win over BU). Baylor is four-for-five on fourth down in its own territory this season and the Bears have punted only three times when facing a fourth-and-4 or less. In other words, it might be a good idea on Saturday to postpone your trip to the fridge and stick around after West Virginia makes a third-down stop.

Lesley, ShaDon Brown and the rest of the Mountaineer defensive staff have effectively built a unit that is based on vertical penetration, evidenced by the fact West Virginia features two of the top three players in the Big 12 in tackles-for-loss (No. 1 Taijh Alston and No. 3 Dante Stills). All told, 20 different WVU defenders have had a hand in a TFL, including seven with three or more. This makes for an interesting matchup against a Baylor offense that prides itself in efficiency and, like the WVU, will be eager to rebound from a tough conference loss last week.

The constant, lateral movement of the Bears' running game, combined with the afternoon temperature, will serve as its own challenge. Chasing stretch plays down from sideline-to-sideline all afternoon in the 90-plus degree heat of Central Texas will test the depth of a West Virginia defense that will be trying to distribute snaps accordingly. The goal for the Mountaineer staff is to ensure that its top-line talent has something left in the tank in the final minutes of a tight game.

The difference in last year's game in Morgantown proved to be red zone production. The Mountaineer offense hit paydirt on all four of its trips inside the Baylor 20. The WVU defense, meanwhile, swelled up at critical times, limiting the Bears to just one touchdown in three trips. 

Let's hope that bodes well for a West Virginia defense that has been incredibly formidable in the red zone this season, holding opponents to a Big 12-best 2.95 points per trip. The Mountaineers have yielded a touchdown on just 25% of opponents' drives inside the 20. That mark ties WVU for No. 2 nationally. Only Georgia, which hasn't allowed a red zone touchdown yet this year, has been more stifling. 

Speaking of the red zone, here are a few crazy numbers that are tough to reconcile … 

The Mountaineer defense has already faced 20 opponents' red zone possessions – equaling the total they faced all of last season. 

Is this West Virginia defense made of bamboo? Maybe so, because this crew has taken "bend but don't break" to an impressive new level under Jordan Lesley.  
Good luck connecting Kevin Bacon to that.  

Wait a minute … Bacon wasn't in Last Chance U, was he?

I'll see you at the 50.