The No. 1 talking point coming out of Baylor’s postgame presser following the impressive 38-24 victory over BYU was “complimentary football”.

By definition, that’s the offense doing its part to help the defense and vice versa and then special teams doing its part so the offense and defense can find success.

That’s all true, of course. However, what this all means is that Baylor is playing like a confident team. It knows its purpose. It knows and believes what it has to do. Periods of frustration don’t last long. Periods of doubt may occur but aren’t noticeable.

You don’t go out and manhandle your last two opponents by scoring a combined 89 points and barely trail in either of them. This Baylor team that we thought had a chance to be a bowl eligible squad has a lot more on its mind. It’s 6-1 and has defeated two ranked opponents along the way. No Matt Rhule coached team ever did that including 2019 when Baylor went to the Sugar Bowl.

Between West Virginia and BYU, there is nothing fluky about what Baylor has done. It’s been the better team. It’s played like the better team. It deserved exactly what it has earned.

“I don’t really see it as a threshold. To me this was a standard game,’’ Baylor head coach Dave Aranda said. “…They’re so locked in with let’s do the best we can with the day we’ve got. I think we want to continue that. I think that will keep the inside on the inside and the outside on the outside.”

Well, the top standard is to win. How a team gets there is what creates the standard. That’s how the complimentary football is creating Coaches and players and staff know what that standard is. Those on the outside looking in can only make educated guesses.

In this program’s case, that comes down to a zone offense being physical and dominating the line of scrimmage. Baylor rushed for 303 yards and sees its quarterback Gerry Bohanon becoming the alpha in the locker room. It segues to the defense being physical to where the opposing running game is no factor. BYU was held to 67. It also collected five sacks of BYU quarterback Jaren Hall. There’s also a middle linebacker in Dillon Doyle who is now apparently a goal line touchdown specialist. Then it transitions to the kicking game being sound not sloppy. No mistakes were made.

The first three wins were against blah opponents. Iowa State was a bizarre but deserved victory. After Oklahoma State, the Bears know who they are.

“We talk about that quite a bit. We talk about team then unit, then me,’’ Aranda said. “I think there's so many facets and ways that that shows up, just having a team with no superstars, have a team of no selfish units, and just people backing each other on. It’s a team game. And so what, what allows us to be at our best is guys playing for each other and hold each other accountable and push each other to be their best. And I think that's showing up.”

Case in point about Saturday’s game. When BYU scored its first two touchdowns, Baylor answered with touchdowns on the ensuing possession. Then when BYU was driving to cut into what was then a Baylor 24-14 lead in the middle of third quarter, the Bears forced their only turnover of the game with a fumble recovery. They turned that into a touchdown.

Complimentary football matters as long as complacency doesn’t infect it.

“I feels like it means the most,’’ said senior running back Abram Smith. “Coming off a not a really great season to put in all that work and then finally seeing it pay off, I think as a team we're excited for what we can do, but still a lot more ball out there to play, despite being bowl eligible now. We still feel like the sky is the limit.”

The road to success isn’t easy. It never is. As this bye week approaches, what this team has to do is block out the number of atta boys and other noise it’s going to hear for the next two weeks leading up to Texas. There’s nothing wrong with welcoming them. It just cannot let it become consumed by them.

After all, there is a complimentary standard to meet.