Three years ago, when the conference title was on the line, Baylor’s defense turned into a brick wall.
In the final minute of the 2021 Big 12 Championship Game, Oklahoma State threw four tries for two yards and a go-ahead touchdown. The Bears allowed just 1 3/4, and Baylor won the Big 12 crown in Dave Aranda’s second season as head coach.
On Saturday night in Colorado, Baylor needed another game-deciding stop in the final minute, with low stakes (the team’s Big 12 opener) and plenty of room to maneuver. They had 45 yards to defend and just two seconds to cover them. But in a moment reminiscent of Cordell Stewart and Michael Westbrook 30 years ago, Shader Sanders and Rajontay Wester connected for a miracle Hail Mary to send the game into overtime, where the Buffaloes ultimately won 38-31.
These two endings, 33 months apart, show just how far Baylor has fallen from its peak under Aranda, who is now 25-27 in the program.
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“I’ve never seen an end-of-regulation play like this before,” Aranda told reporters.
It may just be a momentary exaggeration after the game, but the Bears’ defensive scheme was so poor that it’s reasonable to believe Aranda never saw a game-deciding Hail Mary.
Quarterback Sawyer Robertson and the Baylor Bears are 2-2 after Saturday’s loss at Colorado. (Christopher Hanewinkel/Emaginations)
Once the highest-paid assistant in college football, Aranda was revered as a defensive genius, but in his fifth year as a head coach, he started the season on the hot seat, and the Bears’ crushing loss to Colorado felt like a potential turning point. Can he recover?
Since Baylor went 12-2 in the 2021 season, which included a Big 12 title and a Sugar Bowl victory, the program has gone 11-18. There have been changes to the offensive and defensive staffs, which has been a theme during Aranda’s tenure.
After the program finished last with a 3-9 record last year, Aranda vowed to make more changes, including being more accessible to the transfer portal, relying more on name and image compensation and stepping up to be the defensive play-caller for the first time since taking over as LSU’s defensive coordinator in 2019.
The first three weeks of the season offered hope. The Bears looked more talented and played with an edge they didn’t have last year, and the transition to Aranda being more active on defense worked well.
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There were encouraging signs in the game against Colorado. Sanders sacked eight times, and there were plenty of pressures, some of them from Texas Tech transfer Steve Linton. There was some great offensive play from quarterback Sawyer Robertson and receivers Monaray Baldwin and Hal Pressley. There was a level of team-wide skill that was rarely seen a year ago.
But Baylor’s loss on Saturday was embarrassing. The Bears gave up a 24-10 lead and squandered multiple chances to end the game in regulation time.
After Sanders’ back-to-back sacks led to a punt on fourth-and-31, Baylor, leading 31-24 with 3:58 remaining, had a chance to take a two-point lead at the Colorado 26. The Bears rushed the ball three times and settled for Isaiah Hankins’ 46-yard field goal attempt with 2:16 remaining, but it missed wide right.
On Colorado’s final fourth-quarter drive, Baylor backed up Buffalo and faced a second-and-24 from its own 31 with 55 seconds left. But the Bears gave up all their yards on the next three plays, and the Buffs survived.
And before Wester made the game-tying catch, Colorado came close to scoring the game-tying score on the previous play, when receiver Will Shepherd dropped a Sanders pass from 2 yards out after getting behind Baylor cornerback Kayden Jenkins.
On Baylor’s final defensive play, which Aranda called the “Victory Cigar,” the Bears pressured Sanders, forcing him out of his left pocket before he could throw a bomb to Wester. Aranda elaborated on the missed assignment on the pressure, saying it was “no excuse” considering Baylor had called a timeout to prepare its defense before the play.
“I take full responsibility for it,” he said. “I have to be able to lead it better.”
Baylor fans all nodded in agreement. It might have been the Bears’ most painful loss since Sept. 11, 1999. That night, Baylor was down 24-21 against UNLV with 20 seconds left and the Rebels had the ball with no timeouts. Instead of kneeling, the Bears held the ball and forced a fumble, and UNLV returned the ball for a 100-yard touchdown and a 27-24 victory.
Instead of coming home 3-1 with a positive outlook, this Baylor team now has to recover from an emotional blow in a conference with tighter margins of error.
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If Saturday’s loss continues, it will be the third straight year of frustration for Baylor’s loyal fans. The upcoming schedule is unforgiving. This weekend, Baylor hosts No. 22 BYU, which beat Kansas State. Then there are back-to-back road games against No. 18 Iowa State and Texas Tech, before returning to No. 20 Oklahoma State to end October.
If the Bears can’t get themselves up quickly, Aranda’s job could be on fire heading into November. Baylor athletic director McRhodes hasn’t publicly indicated how many wins Aranda needs to have to survive the season, but bowl berths are a baseline expectation. That became much harder with the loss of Saturday’s game at Folsom Field.
The season is far from over. Baylor (2-2) has only played a third of its schedule, and a quick recovery by the Bears and a win over the Cougars would go a long way toward escaping Saturday’s nightmare finish. This year’s Big 12 is going to be a tough one to handle, with three of the top four teams in the league’s preseason poll losing in their conference openers.
But urgency is paramount when it comes to flipping the script. The 2021 Big 12 championship season is an outlier of the Aranda era. Baylor has had losing records in the other three years and is now 13-25 overall in every year except 2021. The last time Baylor had back-to-back winning seasons was the final two years of the Matt Rhule era (2018 and 2019).
Baylor leadership wants Aranda to succeed. He is popular around the building because he seems thoughtful and genuine. He is not the fire-breathing caricature that is often the stereotype of a football coach. Being a good guy in college coaching can buy you extra time, and it certainly helped Aranda succeed this year, despite the decline in results.
Whether he gets another one depends on how Baylor responds to the recent disaster. It won’t be decided one way or the other because of Saturday’s result. But if there’s any uncertainty about the future when Rhoades makes his decision at the end of the season, the way the Bears lost will certainly be noticeable.
After Saturday’s loss, Aranda said the Bears will try to get their spirit back and called the loss a “big wake-up call.”
“I know we’re going to respond,” he said. “I know this team. And I know we’re going to come out of this stronger.”
If we are going to lift any kind of trophy under Aranda, then it will have to be that way.
(Above photo: Andrew Wevers / Getty Images)
