By now you know Baylor’s offense goes fast. Calling the Bears fast merely limits their capability, though. You likely haven’t seen an offense go as wide as Baylor, but get ready to see a lot of that Saturday afternoon.

I’d never seen teams put receivers that far outside and I was not alone. The field is 53 1/3 yards wide — 13 1/3 yards wide inside the hash marks, 20 yards wide outside the hash marks — but Baylor makes it feel much bigger.

No one who plays defense for the ninth-ranked Mountaineers could believe what they saw in preparation for Saturday’s noon game against No. 25 Baylor at Mountaineer Field (FX telecast).

“I didn’t realize how big the field was until we started to practice against it,” inside linebacker Doug Rigg said. “When I saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, this could be a big problem.’ “

Look at all the room on the right side of the formation. Look how honest an aggressive Louisiana-Monroe defense has to play. The Bears will take that all day, though Nick Florence has to make a big throw to get the ball there.

A year ago, Baylor completed 34 passes for 451 yards against Oklahoma State, which we figure looked a lot like WVU will look Saturday because Joe DeForest was with the Cowboys and is now with the Mountaineers.

The true trouble, though, is that the Bears throw the ball deep as much as anyone — and Pat Miller said they do it way more than Clemson, even. The combination makes Baylor a little tricky.

“It’s very unique,” DeForest said. “They throw a ton of deep passes, so they make you defend them vertically, but they also make you defend them horizontally when they space you out, which is a problem. When they split guys out, you’ve got to defend them and that opens up the middle.”

Baylor, believe it or not, is a fairly balanced team. The Bears average 39 runs and 39 throws and they try to use the balance against a defense. What the Mountaineers said is that the Baylor spread forces a defense to define itself before the snap.The Bears than take their pick.

“It’s smart,” Rigg said. “They spread you out so much that you can see if an outside linebacker is sneaking in for a blitz, which leaves his man open outside. They can see everything. They see how many people are in the box. It’s perfectly declared what the defense is in. You can’t hide too much and you can’t show your blitz too much without giving away your play.”

Here’s Baylor in a run play. Watch how the corners and safeties are basically afterthoughts. Out of sight, out of mind stuff. ULM was tenacious throughout the game, and paid for it, but they leave little to the offense’s imagination here. Three defenders on the line and one each on the outside left and outside right. One linebacker in the immediate box. Baylor has six on the line, so Baylor should be able to block that.

Similar situation here. Three on the line and three more second-level players in the box and Baylor suspects another player is going to come from a nickel position. So the Bears check with the sideline and ULM then shows six and positions a safety in the middle. Baylor has five offensive linemen, but has four receivers in one-on-one coverage. Baylor throws outside and it would be a bigger play, I bet, if Florence makes a sharper throw.

This run/pass, crowd/disperse conflict is very much on WVU’s mind.

“They throw ball a lot and spread people out so you’ve got five players in the box for you and five blockers for them,” linebacker Isaiah Bruce said. “The tie goes to the offense and they can run the ball that way. When you bring more people into the box, they dump it out quick to a receiver in space.”

The spread is especially fun in the red zone. Baylor creates more room to run the ball and to run routes and also does some zone read stuff to add a little hesitation to the defense. Spreading out far actually creates some vertical space, too. It either asks the safeties to come closer or pushes them back. Darwin Cook said safeties can’t play normal depth because the width changes their angles. It can make that normally cramped red zone area less crowded … and Baylor should have had a touchdown here.

What you’re seeing are lots of isolated defenders. That’s Baylor’s goal. The Bears have a fleet of slick receivers whose sizes vary. They’re all trusted to make a defender miss. What’s been WVU’s largest, though declining, weakness on defense? Tackling. Obviously defensive backs have a big responsibility to get people on the ground, or else, but the inside linebackers, who are often left alone when the spread pulls their teammates out wide, have a tall task too because they’ll be running a little further in pursuit.

“We have to get more people to the point of attack on a consistent basis,” co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Keith Patterson said. “When you’ve got one-on-one tackling in space you’re going to miss tackles because the offensive guys are moving in open space. We’ve got to be able to make those plays, but also get more players swarming to the point of attack so we have a better chance at getting him down.”