Good Listeners: If we're willing to listen, Dave Aranda will tell us a lot
Over the course of this offseason, one thing that I forced myself to do was inherently focus on what Dave Aranda was telling us. If we can listen to his analogies and metaphors and tie together his references of great philosophers and apply it appropriately, it is very revealing. His words aren’t empty, and in many cases he’s giving us a direct window into the Baylor program.
I say that with the understanding that hindsight is always 20-20. A quote received on day one of a 365-day calendar is much easier to translate or apply on day 365. But I do not believe he’s aiming to hide or mask his words with spruced-up wisdom. It’s indicative of how he views the world.
We just have to listen.
I spent some time looking back at media sessions with Aranda from fall camp of 2022, and even early into the season. I primed myself in advance by asking, “What was he trying to tell us?” Frankly, it wasn’t that hard to find it. On Monday of game week ahead of the 2022 season opener against Albany, he spelled it out for us.
Running into the storm.
"That was really addressed throughout the end of summer and into fall camp, and I feel like we're in a good spot but there hasn't been a bunch of stormy weather, thunder and lightning and all of it. And that's when you kind of get to see how this house was built," Aranda said just over a year ago in his first weekly press conference.
Translated: Pressure was a concern.
"There's going to be failure. There's going to be something that's not going to go 100% right. So, how do you respond in the moment? How do you rise from this particular fall?"
Translated: Reaction to failure was a concern.
"We'll see with the leadership part,” Aranda said. “I'm hoping that all the work done that was done previous is for our best now."
Translated: Leadership was a concern.
All of these quotes given by Aranda within five days of the season opener against Albany. While the media predicted the Bears as the back-to-back Big 12 Champs, Aranda’s gestures from the front row seats told us a different story.
For no one’s fault of my own as a lead reporter of the program, it went greatly ignored. It all came to a head quickly as the Bears traveled to face BYU and lost in week two. The symptoms in the minutes and days after were visible to all in that without a need for Aranda to whisper a word.
"I think the inner workings of what it takes to have the discipline, the ability to own pressure, those are things that still have to be developed,” Aranda said after the loss in Provo.
The events of the season led to a culmination of transfers, personnel changes, suspensions and off-season changes.
Back to the future.
As a new chapter in the Aranda era is set to begin in 2023, with a similar reflection that we used to looked back on the 2022 season, what can be taken from Aranda’s final preseason media availability?
There was no talk about stormy weather this go round, so that seems like a good starting point, but there was an emphasis on a concern of being able to address what needs to be addressed immediately as it occurs. Not after the game or in the next practice, but on the fly.
“For us to fully be present and attack the thing, and to do it in such a way that players and staff are connected, so if something's broke, we can fix it in the middle of it, are our strong, strong considerations at this stage,” Aranda said.
Baylor made three key offseason changes, including a big one on the defensive side of the ball as defensive doordinator and middle linebackers coach Ron Roberts was relieved of his duties and replaced by Matt Powledge. This seems to intimately address the “way that players and staff are connected” portion to Aranda’s quote. A common talking point for Aranda and the team is about the joy they have playing for Powledge.
Additionally, how will our current interpretation of “strong, strong considerations” be viewed when we look back in 365 days? Will the ability for this team to adapt on the fly be seen as the pillars which built the 2023 season or sand foundation that results in failure? It’s seemingly of great importance to Aranda.
The second quote to grab my attention was on the topic of playing green. This has been a key phrase for Aranda dating way back into his time at Baylor, but he expounded on the slow downs and stops that have occurred in the last couple of months and how his staff was addressing that for the season. The slow downs and stops happening in the offseason should allow the team to play green.
"We’ve got everything we need and let's get that heart set, mindset, right and attack it,” Aranda said. “That is when you feel ready, and I feel that with us, but there's always going to be something and it's not a matter of there not being something. It's just a matter of how you handle it in the moment and I'm positive about that as well, with the staff that we have.”
There was a strong correlation to the “there’s always going to be something” and “there’s going to be failure” from the 2022 season for me, but when it’s followed by “I’m positive about that as well” rather than “we’ll see with the leadership,” there is a significantly different vibe.
These quotes in general leave us with open-ended questions, however. We truly don’t know how this team will react to adversity. We don’t know if the staff can pull together the squad and reset itself when things go south.
Only the season will answer those questions, but there is something to be said for Aranda’s opinions.
Offseason and preseason work and motivation and coaching all but fade between those white lines. There’s a reason player-led teams are considered to be some of the best teams in college football. It’s why experience and maturity are so important.
That’s why, no matter how you feel about Blake Shapen in this moment, you better be pulling for him if you want Baylor to succeed this season. The quarterback position is unlike any other position in sports. Fair or foul, the majority of the credit and the blame falls back there.
There’s always going to be failure. There’s always going to be something.
Those two phrases are why Blake Shapen has to be not only better, but mentally stronger and a leader for Baylor in 2023. If he has truly developed as a leader, and he and his teammates have truly improved their game and matured, that is the variable at the top of list for 2023.
“Going into last year, I know he wanted to be the starter,” Aranda said. “I don't know if there was a full comprehension of what the starter, what that job entailed, of everything that came with it, and the responsibilities and the weight that's carried and just all of it.
“That's a major, major, major difference now.”
There was a lot of attention given to winning the quarterback job. Winning the physical job was the focus, and that was done. Shapen beat out returning starter Gerry Bohanon who led the team to the Big 12 Championship. But without the leadership, it was all for naught.
Leadership, which the team was obvious greatly void of in 2023, can come from anywhere on the team, but a leader at quarterback is almost always greater. A leader to take on the stormy weather, or those pressure filled situations.
“Blake was at the forefront at those high pressure situations, basically trying to basically keep everyone together,” receiver Josh Cameron said of the challenge situations the team was put in by the coaching staff during the off season.
“With that training, it's easy to carry over when you get to the real thing, because he’s so prepared, honestly.
Experience is the greatest teacher, and over the first 15 starts of his career, he has been taught plenty. How those lessons are applied to the game field this fall and the rest of his career is TBD, but the application has been there in spades during the spring, summer and fall, as recorded in the testimony of his coaches and teammates.
That includes senior tight end Drake Dabney, who also praised former Baylor QB and teammate Gerry Bohanon for his leadership.
“When when Blake talks, everyone listens,” senior tight end Drake Dabney said. “So you know he's gonna give you his all and he's gonna expect for us to give our all as well.”
The good and the bad, the ugly, and everything that happens in between. If Shapen can truly endure it all, he can be the leader this team needs to avoid another 6-7 season that was a few mistakes away from 9-4.
Aranda told us he can be that leader. And as I’ve told you, I’ve been trying to listen to him more than I have in the past.
“He's been on both sides of it now,” Aranda said. “If things [don’t] go well to start the game, I don't think the down is going to be very low. Things go really well or high to start the game, I don't think he's going to get too high. And I think he's going to stay kind of medium because he's seen it all, or seen a lot of it, rather.”