Few players in college football head into 2026 with a wider range of outcomes than DJ Lagway.
That’s a sharp turn from where the conversation sat a year ago. After a debut season that helped Florida go 6-1 in his starts, Lagway was riding a wave of momentum.
He opened 2025 as one of the favorites to win the Heisman Trophy, and Pro Football Focus had him inside its top 10 quarterbacks entering the season, even ahead of eventual Heisman runner-up Diego Pavia. The buzz around him was real, and Billy Napier sounded just as sold on what was coming next.
"He's got talent, and then all these areas that are unlimited in terms of improvement," then-Florida headman Billy Napier said of Lagway before the season. "There's room for him to go to work and get better.
And that's the thing that I think about him. He is consumed with getting better."
Instead, 2025 got wrecked by injuries. Lagway dealt with sports hernia surgery, shoulder problems, and a severe calf strain that left him in a walking boot. The missed time piled up in spring and summer, and Napier made clear it was not the ideal setup.
"It's not ideal," Napier said of Lagway missing time. "In the perfect world, he would be perfect every day of the offseason.
I think the good thing is his attitude toward it. I think that's a positive.
"He's in Year 2. I think he understands what's required to be ready. It's not ideal, but I think ultimately we'll come up with the best plan we can to have him ready."
That best plan never really clicked. Through Florida’s first seven games, Lagway had only nine touchdown passes, nine interceptions, and was averaging fewer than 7 yards per attempt.
The Gators also failed to score 20 points in four of those games, including one against non-Power Four South Florida. With the offense sputtering, Florida moved on from Napier with five games left in the regular season.
By December, Lagway was in the transfer portal. A month later, he had signed with Baylor, where he became the highest-rated recruit in program history.
The move to Waco gives him a fresh start and a familiar kind of pressure. Baylor brought in a quarterback with elite recruiting pedigree and a messy recent track record, and the fit points straight to offensive coordinator Jake Spavital. He’s coached future NFL quarterbacks like Geno Smith, Brandon Weeden, and Johnny Manziel, and Baylor’s passing numbers last season dwarfed Florida’s over the same number of games - 3,715 passing yards and 31 touchdowns, compared with Florida’s 1,260 and 13.
"When I had my conversations with him, and he was contemplating different places, Florida State, Kentucky, all these other places, my advice to him was, you want to go somewhere where it is on your back," Griffin said of Lagway's transfer decision, adding, "The Baylor Bears are going to sink or swim based on how DJ Lagway plays."
There’s also the Texas angle. Lagway is a Willis, Texas native, so the Baylor move comes with the feel of a homecoming.
And the scrutiny isn’t just coming from the local side. CBS Sports put Lagway at No. 1 on its list of the biggest boom-or-bust players in 2026, making the national picture pretty clear.
Brad Crawford wrote: "Now Baylor is betting that a homecoming unlocks the former five-star quarterback's best campaign," CBS Sports' Brad Crawford wrote in the piece. "If Lagway stays healthy and regains confidence, he could become one of the Big 12's biggest stars.
If the turnover issues and durability concerns remain, Baylor's season could unravel quickly."
Baylor won’t have to wait long to find out which version it gets. The Bears face Auburn on Saturday, and they enter that matchup as heavy underdogs.
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