Nearly three years ago, with a conference title on the line, Baylor’s defense turned into a brick wall.
In the final minute of the 2021 Big 12 Championship Game, Oklahoma State had four tries to get 2 yards and a go-ahead touchdown. The Bears allowed just 1 3/4, and Baylor won the Big 12 crown in coach Dave Aranda’s second season.
On Saturday night at Colorado, Baylor needed another game-sealing stop in the final minute, with lower stakes (the teams’ Big 12 opener) and much more wiggle room: 45 yards to defend and only two seconds for the Buffaloes to cover them. But in a scene reminiscent of the one Kordell Stewart and Michael Westbrook produced 30 years ago, Shedeur Sanders and LaJohntay Wester connected on a miracle Hail Mary to send the game to overtime, where the Buffaloes eventually won 38-31.
Those two endings, 33 months apart, encapsulate how far Baylor has fallen from its peak under Aranda, who’s now 25-27 with the program.
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“The end-of-regulation play is something I’ve never seen,” Aranda told reporters.
That might just be in-the-moment postgame hyperbole, but the Bears executed their defensive plan so poorly that it was reasonable to believe Aranda had never seen a game-winning Hail Mary.
Quarterback Sawyer Robertson and the Baylor Bears are 2-2 after their loss Saturday at Colorado. (Christopher Hanewinckel / Imagn Images)
Once the highest-paid assistant in college football revered for his defensive genius, Aranda entered the season squarely on the hot seat in Year 5 of his first head coaching job, and the Bears’ crushing loss to Colorado feels like a potential turning point. Can he recover?
Since the 2021 season, when Baylor went 12-2 with that Big 12 title and a Sugar Bowl victory, the program is 11-18. The offensive and defensive staffs have turned over, which has been a theme of Aranda’s tenure.
After the program appeared to hit rock bottom with a 3-9 finish last year, Aranda vowed to make more changes, going heavier into the transfer portal, leaning harder into name, image and likeness compensation and installing himself as the defensive play caller for the first time since serving as LSU’s defensive coordinator in 2019.
The first three weeks of the season offered promise. The Bears looked more talented and played with an edge that seemed to be missing last year, and Aranda’s transition to become more hands-on with the defense worked well.
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Even against Colorado, there were encouraging signs. There were eight sacks of Sanders and many more pressures, several of which came from Texas Tech transfer Steve Linton. There were great offensive plays from quarterback Sawyer Robertson and receivers Monaray Baldwin and Hal Presley. There was a general look of competence throughout the team that didn’t often exist a year ago.
But how Baylor lost Saturday was embarrassing. The Bears gave up a 24-10 lead, and they squandered multiple opportunities to put the game away in regulation.
After back-to-back sacks of Sanders led to a punt on fourth-and-31, Baylor — leading 31-24 with 3:58 left — took over at the Colorado 26 with a chance to take a two-score lead. The Bears ran the ball three times and settled for a 46-yard Isaiah Hankins field goal attempt that sailed wide right with 2:16 left.
On Colorado’s final fourth-quarter drive, Baylor had the Buffaloes backed up, facing a second-and-24 at their own 31 with 55 seconds left. Yet the Bears gave up all those yards on the next three plays, keeping the Buffs alive.
And before Wester’s score-tying catch, Colorado flirted with a game-winner on the previous play, as receiver Will Sheppard dropped a pass from Sanders at the 2 after getting behind Baylor cornerback Caden Jenkins.
On Baylor’s final defensive play of regulation, which Aranda said is called “Victory Cigar,” the Bears pressured Sanders and flushed him from the pocket to his left before he launched the bomb to Wester. Aranda detailed a missed assignment on the pressure, which he said was “inexcusable” considering Baylor called timeout to set up the defense before the play.
“I take full responsibility for that,” he said. “I have to be able to coach that better.”
Baylor fans everywhere nodded in agreement. It might be the Bears’ most painful loss since Sept. 11, 1999. That night, Baylor led UNLV 24-21 and possessed the ball with 20 seconds left and the Rebels out of timeouts. Instead of taking a knee, the Bears ran the ball and fumbled; UNLV returned it for a 100-yard touchdown and a 27-24 win.
This Baylor team, instead of returning home 3-1 with positive momentum, must now recover from the emotional gut punch, with a smaller margin for error in this ultra-competitive conference.
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If Saturday’s loss spawns a losing streak, it will be the third consecutive year of frustration for the Baylor faithful. The upcoming schedule is not forgiving. This weekend Baylor hosts No. 22 BYU, which just dominated Kansas State. Then comes consecutive road games at No. 18 Iowa State and Texas Tech before returning home for No. 20 Oklahoma State to close out October.
If the Bears can’t quickly pick themselves up, Aranda’s seat could be on fire heading into November. Although Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades hasn’t publicly dictated a certain number of wins for Aranda to survive the season, making a bowl is a baseline expectation. That was made a lot harder by squandering Saturday’s game at Folsom Field.
The season is not over, by any means. Baylor (2-2) is just a third of the way through the schedule, and if the Bears can rebound quickly and snag a win over the Cougars, it would go a long way toward moving past Saturday’s nightmare finish. This year’s Big 12 is sure to be unwieldy, with three of the top four teams in the league’s preseason poll having lost their conference openers.
But urgency in flipping the script is paramount. The Big 12 championship season in 2021 is the outlier of the Aranda era. Baylor had losing records in the other three years and is now 13-25 overall combined in every year except 2021. The last time Baylor had consecutive winning seasons was the final two years of the Matt Rhule era (2018 and 2019).
Baylor leadership wants Aranda to succeed. He’s well liked around the building because he comes across as thoughtful and genuine. He’s not the fire-breathing caricature that is often the football coach stereotype. In college coaching, being a nice guy can buy you extra time, and it certainly helped earn Aranda this year, despite declining results.
Whether he gets another depends on how Baylor responds to its latest debacle. The decision won’t be made one way or another because of Saturday’s result. But the way the Bears lost will certainly stick out if there’s any ambiguity about the future when Rhoades weighs the decision at season’s end.
After Saturday’s loss, Aranda said the Bears would try to get their heart back in their body and called the loss “a big wake-up call.”
“I know we’ll respond,” he said. “I know this team. And I know we’ll come out stronger because of this.”
If they’re going to hoist another trophy of any kind under Aranda, they better.
(Top photo: Andrew Wevers / Getty Images)