Baylor vs. WVU 2012: Bears defense completely nonexistent in loss to Mountaineers

Despite scoring 63 points, the Baylor Bears lost the offensive shootout of the season on Saturday to West Virginia by allowing the Mountaineers to put 70 points on the board. As you might imagine after a game where the final score is 70-63, the folks over at SB Nation's Baylor blog Our Daily Bears have some issues with the Bears defense:

I'm going to say some things here about Baylor's defense that are not positive. I want to make two things clear before I do: 1) I'm not taking anything away from WVU QB Geno Smith in doing so because he was simply transcendent today, and 2) I don't think we need to fire Phil Bennett. Yes, we're paying him for a lot more than we're getting right now. Yes, everyone expects for the defense to perform much, much better than it did today. No, we can't get where we want to be with that kind of performance. All that taken as fact, Phil Bennett is a good defensive coach. Despite the scorn I heaped upon him in the heat of the moment on twitter, it's not his fault that our players don't tackle when they have the chance, and it's not his fault they make terrible decisions like leaving Tavon Austin wide open down the sideline. Our biggest problem at this point is clearly the defensive line, where we're playing a redshirt freshman in an alignment we've never used before because we lost our starter before the season.

Baylor has a bye next Saturday, before welcoming the TCU Horned Frogs to Waco on Oct. 13. A kickoff time for that game has yet to be announced.