Can Dave Aranda bounce back from Baylor’s collapse against Colorado?

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 attempts for 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.

Saturday night in Colorado, Baylor needed one more decisive stop in the final minute, with lower stakes (the team’s Big 12 opener) and much more room to move: 45 yards to defend and just two seconds for the Buffaloes to cover them. But in a scene reminiscent of the one Kordell Stewart and Michael Westbrook produced thirty years ago, Shedeur Sanders and LaJohntay Wester connected on a miracle Hail Mary and sent the game to overtime, where the Buffaloes ultimately won 38-31 won.

These two endings, 33 months apart, represent just how far Baylor has fallen from his peak under Aranda, who is now 25-27 with the program.

“The end of regulation is something I have never seen,” Aranda told reporters.

That might just be hyperbole of the moment, 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, praised for his defensive brilliance, Aranda started the season on the right foot 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 been reversed, which has been a theme during Aranda’s tenure.

After the program seemed to have hit rock bottom last year with a 3-9 finish, Aranda vowed to make more changes, push harder into the transfer portal, lean harder on name, image and likeness compensation and install 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 were promising. The Bears looked more talented and played with an edge that seemed to be missing last year, and Aranda’s move 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 air of competence within the team that didn’t often exist a year ago.

But how Baylor lost on Saturday was embarrassing. The Bears gave up a 24-10 lead, and they wasted several chances to put the game away in regulation.

After back-to-back sacks led Sanders 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-point lead take scores. The Bears ran the ball three times, settling for a 46-yard field goal attempt by Isaiah Hankins that sailed wide right with 2:16 left.

On Colorado’s final drive of the fourth quarter, Baylor had the Buffaloes backing it up, with a second-and-24 at their own 31 with 55 seconds left. Still, the Bears gave up all those yards on the next three plays, keeping the Buffs alive.

And before Wester’s tying catch, Colorado flirted with a game-winner on the previous play, when receiver Will Sheppard dropped a Sanders pass at the 2 after getting behind Baylor cornerback Caden Jenkins.

On Baylor’s final defensive play in regulation, which Aranda calls “Victory Cigar,” the Bears pressured Sanders and flushed him out of the pocket on his left before launching the bomb at Wester. Aranda detailed a missed assignment on the pressure, which he said was “inexcusable” as Baylor had called a timeout to set up 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 September 11, 1999. That night, Baylor led UNLV 24-21 and possessed the ball with 20 seconds left and the Rebels running out of timeouts. Instead of taking a knee, the Bears ran the ball and fumbled; UNLV gave it back for a 100-yard touchdown and a 27-24 win.

Now, instead of going 3-1 with positive momentum, this Baylor team 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 snaps a losing streak, it will be the third straight 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 follow back-to-back road games at No. 18 Iowa State and Texas Tech before returning home to face No. 20 Oklahoma State to close out October.

If the Bears can’t pick themselves up quickly, Aranda’s seat could be on fire come November. While Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades has not publicly dictated a certain number of wins for Aranda to survive the season, making a bowl is a basic expectation. That was made even more difficult by the forfeiture of Saturday’s game at Folsom Field.

In any case, the season is not over yet. Baylor (2-2) is only a third of the way through the schedule, and if the Bears can bounce back quickly and pick up a win over the Cougars, it would be a big step toward moving past Saturday’s nightmare. This year’s Big 12 will certainly be tough, as three of the top four teams in the preseason poll have lost their conference openers.

But the urgency in flipping the script is paramount. The 2021 Big 12 championship season is the outlier of the Aranda era. Baylor had losing records in the remaining three years and is now 13-25 overall combined in every year except 2021. The last time Baylor had back-to-back winning seasons was the last two years of the Matt Rhule era (2018 and 2019).

Baylor’s leadership wants Aranda to succeed. He is very popular in the building because he seems thoughtful and sincere. He is not the fire-breathing caricature that is often the stereotype of football coaches. In college coaching, being a nice guy can buy you extra time, and it certainly helped Aranda this year despite the downturn.

Whether he gets another depends on how Baylor responds to the latest debacle. The decision will not be made one way or the other because of Saturday’s result. But the manner in which the Bears lost will certainly stand out if there is any uncertainty about the future as Rhoades considers the decision at the end of the season.

After Saturday’s loss, Aranda said the Bears would try to get their hearts back in their bodies, calling the loss “a big wake-up call.”

“I know we will respond,” he said. “I know this team. And I know we will come out stronger because of this.”

If they are going to hoist another trophy of any kind under Aranda, they can do better.

(Top photo: Andrew Wevers / Getty Images)