When Gerry Bohanon’s phone lit up earlier this week, he cracked his signature smile. He grinned from ear to ear when he saw his former head coach, Dave Aranda, liken the overall character and leadership style of Baylor’s current quarterback, DJ Lagway, to Bohanon's.
“Gerry was a great leader on the field,” Aranda said in his Monday press conference ahead of the season-opener against Auburn. “Gerry would, whether he was an offensive player or a defensive player, connect with people. If a defender made a great play, Gerry would be one of the first to congratulate them, and this is in practice.”
Aranda continued, “If an offensive player went the wrong way, he would be one of the first to correct them, and then build off of it when the player would eventually go the right way. There is a talent in identifying guys who are doing right or doing wrong in the moment, right when it happens. In football, there's the ability to watch the tape and rewind and pause and all that, but to be in the moment and see it and then talk to it and either call it out or call it up. DJ has that ability, and Gerry did too.”
Bohanon didn’t need to turn on the tape or rely on Aranda’s better judgment, as he already knew Lagway was the real deal. He’d watched Lagway plenty of times and was ecstatic when the Baylor legacy chose the Bears in the transfer portal earlier this year.
“I loved the decision,” Bohanon said in an interview with SicEm365. “I love the move. Lagway fits what Aranda wants to do very well, what that offense needs to be. I think he's a big piece, and I also think he's a guy that they're not talking about enough for this year.”
When you start to peel back the layers, the similarities between Bohanon and Lagway are striking. As recruits, Bohanon was a four-star prospect and the No. 1 player in Arkansas, while Lagway was a five-star and the No. 1 quarterback in the 2024 class. Physically, both are built like absolute tanks: Bohanon is 6-foot-3 and 221 pounds, while Lagway is 6-foot-3 and 237 pounds.
“He's a very good athlete,” Bohanon said when asked about the parallels between him and Lagway. “I think he's an underrated passer. He's a leader. I see a lot of great signs, a lot of similarities. I see a lot that is very intriguing as a quarterback, just watching him, the way he carries himself. I'm the type of guy that will look at what a guy is off the field first, and I think he's what Baylor needs to flip that switch and get over that hump. He's going to be the guy who leads and assists with culture change.”
Mentally, the makeup is also the same: connectors, natural-born leaders, alphas. Bohanon has always taken pride in his leadership abilities and credits his never-ending desire to learn about people, topics and situations for helping set him apart. He sees those same similarities in Lagway.
“He’s resilient and has played through adversity,” Bohanon noted. “Through playing bad, he’s a guy that takes accountability. He’s all about his team. He’s a serious guy. He loves ball. Everything that I’ve seen from him has been positive and reminds me of myself.”
Bohanon added, “That’s what makes a team. At the end of the day, the guy that is catching the snaps every play is the leader of the team. When that guy can hold up his end when it comes to adversity and can make guys around him better because of the way he challenges and pushes himself, you give yourself a chance to have a really good team. If anything goes well, they're looking at the quarterback. If things go bad, the whole team will be looking at the quarterback.”
In his eyes, a quarterback’s leadership is defined by how he responds to adversity, a lesson Bohanon learned during Baylor’s 2021 championship season and gained an even greater appreciation for after leaving Waco.
Bohanon’s relationship with Aranda has remained strong over the years. One of his most memorable interactions with his former coach came the day after he threw a game-sealing interception against TCU in an upset loss to the rival Horned Frogs in Fort Worth, 30-28.
“I blew that game — I did,” Bohanon said. “We should have won. We were moving the ball down the field, and I threw an interception. Boom. Game over. We did not play well that game. I remember sitting down with Aranda in his office because that game was on my mind that Sunday. That moment shaped our season because that’s when we realized we’re better than that. That should never happen again. We won’t play like that. We understand what it takes, and I think that’s when the shift occurred.”
The Bears followed the defeat with a great week of practice, which culminated in Bohanon’s favorite memory from that 2021 season: a dominant home win over No. 8 Oklahoma, 27-14, in which Bohanon rushed for 107 yards and two touchdowns and threw for 117 yards and a score in front of a packed McLane Stadium.
“Seven days later, there was a light switch flipped,” Bohanon said. “We came out and put TCU behind us. Then to shake back and play the No. 8 team in the country and play them that well after a loss with the attitude that we played with — the aggressiveness, dominance, effort, consistency — everything about it. That was one of the highlights for me because of the way we responded to adversity. Of course the championships and wins are great, but it’s the way we do things, and the way we respond when things don’t go our way is what I remember the most.”
Despite helping Baylor respond with one of its biggest victories of the season, Bohanon didn’t get a storybook ending to his breakout season, as he injured his hamstring in a narrow road win over Kansas State and eventually missed the season-finale against Texas Tech and watched the Big 12 Championship win over No. 5 Oklahoma State from the sidelines.
While it ate at Bohanon to not be on the field, it allowed him to see the bigger picture and begin discovering his purpose beyond playing football.
“When I had the chance to step back and not be able to play through it, I asked myself how I could be useful,” Bohanon said. “What did I care about? What did I enjoy doing? I realized then. When I got injured again, the same thing occurred.”
He continued, “But what I found enjoyment in was helping people. God gave me the gift of being a football player. So, for me, I think my bigger gift was helping, inspiring and making the people around me better. That's something that's more my purpose, and I realized that football allowed me to be able to do that.”
A hobbled Bohanon returned for the Sugar Bowl and helped cap Baylor’s best season in program history with a 21-7 victory over No. 8 Ole Miss. Following the end of the season, Bohanon earned All-Big 12 Honorable Mention, as he threw for more than 2,000 yards and accounted for 27 touchdowns through the air and on the ground; he was also a member of the Big 12 Commissioner's Honor Roll nine times across his BU career.
The Earle, Arkansas, native didn’t get the opportunity to try and lead the Bears to back-to-back Big 12 titles. Aranda selected Blake Shapen as the starter the following spring and announced the decision early enough for Bohanon to find another opportunity. Aranda has since called it one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make, saying, “There is no me without Gerry. There is no last year without Gerry. There’s none of that.”
“Of course I wanted to finish my career in Waco, everybody knows that about me,” Bohanon said. “I’m not a guy that wants to start something and not finish it. But with the way college football works and everything, what was supposed to happen happened. I’m a firm believer in that.”
Bohanon’s career at USF started promisingly, but injuries soon began to pile up. He suffered a season-ending injury in 2022 and missed the entirety of 2023 before transferring to BYU, where he was named a co-captain in 2024 despite not starting a game. In what was a difficult three-year journey, Bohanon leaned on his faith more than ever to get through all of the physical setbacks.
“My faith got even deeper as I had time to sit back throughout my injuries,” Bohanon said. “That was the main thing: my family and my faith got me through it, and just understanding that life is not always about you. Sometimes you gotta understand things are gonna be bigger than you, and you have a purpose. Find your purpose and live in it.”
He added, “My faith helped me do that. It gives me peace every day. It's the reason I can go home and sleep peacefully, through whatever adversity I've faced. It's that peace of mind my faith gives me, and I can sit down, read and spend time praying. That's what makes me a better individual.”
When his collegiate career finally wrapped up after the 2024 season, Bohanon quickly turned his passion for helping people into a career, training high school quarterbacks to improve and achieve their dreams of playing at the next level.
“It has probably been more fulfilling than playing, honestly, because I feel like when you're playing, you get caught up in just yourself,” Bohanon said. “But right now, it's bigger than me. People ask me all the time, ‘Do I miss playing?’ I enjoyed playing, but I don't want to play now. I closed that door. I've trained guys that come from a lot of different backgrounds. Being able to influence those guys and teach them and try to correct some of their wrong ways of thinking and give them different input on what's so much more that life has to offer, I think that's very fulfilling for me.”
Bohanon works with quarterbacks in the Memphis, St. Louis and Tampa Bay areas and has trained players who have either signed with or received offers from Baylor, Iowa, Illinois, Auburn and other programs. For now, he’s content with where he’s at and doesn’t have any plans to join a coaching staff, whether at the collegiate or the high school level.
“I enjoy making quarterbacks better people and helping develop them as quarterbacks,” Bohanon said. “I truly love what I'm doing, so I don't know if coaching is in my future. But right now, I'm really enjoying learning and becoming a better quarterback developer and trainer.”
While Bohanon is living out his purpose, he still speaks with Aranda regularly. He plans to travel to Atlanta this Saturday for Baylor’s season opener against Auburn, where, of course, he’ll be in the stands, supporting his Bears and rocking his favorite colors: Green and Gold.
