Dave Aranda enters 2026 with the kind of pressure that tends to swallow a season before it even starts.
Baylor’s coach is widely viewed as being on the hot seat after another losing year in Waco, and the message around the program is simple: the Bears need a real turnaround, fast. Baylor went 5-7 last season, finished 3-6 in Big 12 play, and is 36-37 under Aranda overall. If the slide continues, this could be the year the seven-year coach runs out of runway.
Aranda didn’t try to sugarcoat it at Big 12 football media days in Frisco earlier this month.
“Last year was not up to our standard. I take accountability for that,” Aranda said.
“There’s been strong change. There’s been me moving out of defense and bringing in Joe Klanderman and a brand-new scheme and new excitement and new methods.”
That change starts with the staff and runs straight through the roster. Aranda said Baylor learned a hard lesson a year ago by putting too much money into skill players and not enough into the trenches.
“The line of scrimmage is where our attention and our money has gone this year,” he said.
The biggest name in the rebuild is quarterback DJ Lagway, whose arrival from Florida has come with a hefty price tag that media reports and industry observers put in the $3 million range. Baylor is also replacing four of five starters on its offensive line, a clear attempt to give Lagway protection and create room for Dawson Pendergrass, the junior running back who missed all of last season with a foot injury.
Aranda framed the approach as a shift in how Baylor is building.
“In bringing in DJ Lagway and his energy and his passion to play football and achieve at a really high level, there’s building the team inside-out as opposed to outside-in,” Aranda said.
There’s also a new voice running the defense. After handling play-calling duties the past two seasons, Aranda handed that job to Joe Klanderman, who spent the previous six seasons at Kansas State.
The Bears’ late-game issues were another sore spot from 2025, when they dropped one-score games to Houston, TCU and Arizona State. Aranda kept coming back to the same theme in Frisco.
“We’ve got to close the deal,” he said. “Hey man, you’ve gone through all the things and have done all the things, and now you’re in a position to close this game.
This is what we’re here for. This is what you do.
This is who we are. That’s been a huge emphasis throughout the offseason.”
Aranda also said the new roster has started to take on an identity, pointing to Lagway’s presence and the quarterback’s fit in the program.
“He felt like he wanted to be free, and I feel like he felt Baylor is a place that he could play free and really kind of be free,” Aranda said. “I am all about that, man.
… He has a huge chip on his shoulder. I will say that’s pretty true of our whole team.
Our team is hungry and believes that we can win.”
The outside pressure is real. CBS Sports put Aranda on its “America’s Hottest Seats” list, alongside Florida State’s Mike Norvell and Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell. Athlon Sports went even further, calling 2026 “a do-or-die season for Aranda” and suggesting Baylor kept him for a seventh year only to stabilize things after former athletic director Mack Rhoades left at the end of last year.
The schedule won’t make life easy. Baylor opens Sept. 5 against Auburn in Atlanta, then faces Prairie View A&M, Louisiana Tech and Colorado before a trip to Arizona State on Oct.
- The Bears also host TCU, Iowa State and Texas Tech, and finish with road games at Kansas, UCF and Houston.
One of the more notable dates comes Nov. 14 at BYU, where Baylor will try to bounce back from BYU’s 34-28 win on Sept. 28, 2024.
Aranda said he has known BYU coach Kalani Sitake for years and has a deep respect for him.
“Kalani is the type where I imagine he’s got a lot of friends, but he’s someone that I’ve known for awhile,” Aranda said. “Whether I’ve been up or down or all around, he’s treated me with total respect.
So I have a lot of respect for him. I know his team is a team that’s going to fight tough, and you talk about four-quarter games.
They’re going to play a four-quarter game.”
Baylor’s 2026 outlook is still tied to the same question hanging over Aranda all offseason: can this group finally finish? The coach has made it clear that everything from the staff changes to the spending to the identity of the roster is aimed at answering that question before it’s too late.
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