Searching for Swagger: Can Dave Aranda and Baylor Rediscover an Identity This Spring?

Two of our resident experts — Colt Barber and Grayson Grundhoefer — answer some of the top questions surrounding head coach Dave Aranda and the Baylor program heading into spring football.

Under head coach Dave Aranda, it’s felt like this program is constantly changing what it wants to be. This go-around, what team identity are you hoping emerges this season?

Colt: The cliche is to say that Baylor needs to be tough and physical. But reality is that every college football team in the country wants to do that. Remove that surface-level idea, and what your program comes down to is fitting personnel with the schemes you want to run. The problem is that firing and hiring repeatedly yield inconsistent schemes with ever-changing personnel. 

How does that fix itself for 2026? The good news is that Baylor is about to open season three offensively under Jake Spavital. Three years is the longest Dave Aranda has had a coordinator in place in tenure in Waco. Yes, there is considerable personnel turnover, but there is at least something returning, and the depth chart will be replenished through the transfer portal. I’m not expecting any groundbreaking offensive progression, but consistent football offensively is what I look for from the offense, unlike what we saw in 2025. 

Defensively, I do see the light at the end of the tunnel with Joe Klanderman. And that’s an actual identity of what he wants to do. In 2021 and even 2022, we saw what Ron Roberts wanted to do. I don’t think we ever had a clear idea of what the defense wanted to be good at from 2023 to 2025. I fully expect Klanderman’s mission to be evident from the first game moving forward. How good the unit will be is still TBD, but his track record says we will at least see a purpose. 

Offensively, consistency as an identity is what I’m looking for. Defensively, a purpose. If those two things happen, maybe this season is entertaining at the very least, and not leaving us slamming our keyboards every Monday morning again. 

Grayson: Honestly, I think Baylor needs to find a way to get its swag back. That is what has been missing for me watching this team over the years. There just isn’t a killer mindset or an elite confidence. You almost want the players to be delusional about their confidence. It truly gives you an edge if you think you should win every game on the schedule, and therefore play like that with an elite level of physicality.

The 2021 team had it with a group of guys that simply felt like they were going to dominate the other team. This mindset has been a part of every great team at Baylor over the last 15 years. There has to be an elite confidence and physicality with this program, and I think that comes from a different level of swagger.

The teams have been so uneven the last few seasons due to one side of the ball or both sides of the ball not having IT for that season. This has to be a team identity built during the offseason and fostered by the team’s leaders and coaches. Bring back that Baylor swag, because that identity has paid off for this program.