It’s still dark outside when the alarm rings. DJ Lagway is already up.
He goes through the bedrooms in the Miami beach house, waking the dozen teammates he paid to bring from Waco for a spring break trip. It’s time for a five-mile run. No excuses.
Lagway’s new Baylor teammates groggily check the time.
5 a.m.
Wide receiver DeBraun Hampton laughs to himself. This is the DJ he’s known since their days on the youth fields of Willis, Texas. It’s the maniacal work ethic that helped him become one of the highest-profile quarterbacks in the sport.
“They thought he was crazy or something,” Hampton stated. “But that’s just Lag. His goals sound crazy, but they’re supposed to be crazy.”
Lagway was a crown jewel at Florida, the centerpiece of a doomed program under Billy Napier. Rated the No. 3 overall player and No. 1 quarterback in the nation, there were whispers of Tebow and Newton when he enrolled. Between injuries and an inconsistent roster, the luster rubbed off.
After Napier was fired, Lagway was left in limbo. When incoming coach Jon Sumrall came to campus, it became clear that the new system wouldn’t be a great fit. It sent Lagway looking for a second chance. Baylor, his father’s alma mater, became the place.
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“My dad always told me to go somewhere where you were wanted,” Lagway stated. “I felt like here, it was mutual love and respect both ways… I’m forever thankful for this place.”
After the run were more workouts. Then active recovery. In the afternoon, Lagway took his teammates to a training facility to throw and do field work, before relaxing together in the house. Over the course of a week, strangers became brothers. This is the first time in Lagway’s career that he’s been healthy enough to go through spring ball.
“He just feels comfortable here,” tight end Matthew Klopfenstein stated. “With that comfort, he’s able to just put his head down and work.”
In Waco, Lagway joins another program mired in uncertainty. Baylor coach Dave Aranda is on one of the hottest seats in the sport. The Bears have had four losing seasons in the last six years. But Lagway has never shied from great expectations.
“The program needs momentum, it needs optimism, it needs hope,” athletic director Doug McNamee stated. “I think a player and a character like DJ does exactly that for us. He gives us that belief and that hope of a legacy coming home to help put the program back where it needs to be.”
Finding a home
Baylor coach Dave Aranda is an introvert, someone who never sought the status and prestige that come with being a major college coach. During legendary defensive coordinator stints at Wisconsin and LSU, including the 2019 national championship, Aranda never stood up and addressed the team. Instead, he would grind in the shadows and draw up brilliant defensive game plans.
“For the longest time, I never really wanted to ever be a head coach,” Aranda told CBS Sports. “I just thought head coaches were just full of hot air and saying whatever they had to say. I thought, my ego isn’t big enough to be one of them.”
It was becoming a parent that forced him to change. As his three children grew up, he saw them retreating into the shadows as he did. Aranda knew he had to grow for his children’s sake, and the only way to do so was to do something that scared him.
Baylor gave him a place to grow. It forced him to grow.
But in the years since leading the Bears to a historic Big 12 title in 2021, the program had atrophied. It seemed to be the end of the line for Aranda until the previous athletic director suddenly resigned, giving him an extra season. It left Aranda’s program adrift and lifeless, desperate for a spark.
In the hours after Lagway entered the transfer portal, the message quickly spread throughout Baylor’s athletic department. The Bears always planned to bring in a quarterback after losing highly productive passer Sawyer Robertson to the NFL Draft, but the priorities soon shifted.
“We had a huge list of every other quarterback in the country,” Baylor offensive coordinator Jake Spavital told CBS Sports. “When we found out he was going to hit the portal, that changed the direction of our recruiting. Everybody was involved, from fans to president to everyone, because they know he’s such a special talent and that his dad had such a great career at Baylor.”
Lagway’s father, Derek, was a running back at Baylor in the late ’90s, posting nearly 1,200 yards in a four-year career under Dave Roberts and Kevin Steele. The younger DJ attended games as a kid, watching the Bears open McLane Stadium and win Big 12 championships.
When Spavital took the offensive coordinator job in 2023, his first visit was to DJ. The pair talked ball for hours in his high school coach’s office. Lagway ultimately picked the Gators, but Baylor was among his finalists, despite coming off a miserable 3-9 season. Even after DJ went to Florida, Derek’s profile picture on Instagram remained the one of DJ in a Baylor jersey from his visit.
“It was basically all I knew growing up was green and gold,” Lagway stated. “My dad would take some of the high schoolers he coached up to camps. Getting to go and see the facilities really sparked the dream for me.”
Lagway was reserved and businesslike through the process as he shuttled between schools. He never really wanted to leave Florida. Other schools presented interesting opportunities, but he was rarely a priority.
When it came to Baylor, the recruitment of Lagway was a university-wide effort. McNamee, the new AD and a Baylor graduate, connected about his time away in the private sector before landing his dream job in Waco. Maybe it wasn’t the straightest path for Lagway, but this could be the perfect ending.
“The best way that I’ve found to do it is to do it without saying it,” Aranda stated. “We just try to think, what’s the feeling, what’s the emotion we want to create here on this visit?”
And for Lagway, the feeling was clear. It was home.
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Rediscovering joy
Lagway spent much of his time in Florida in hiding. To insulate him from the pressures of a major state school, his coaches enrolled him in all remote classes. Instead of protecting him, it isolated him.
At Baylor, Lagway quickly embraced the opportunity to be a traditional college student. He’s walking around campus and working on group projects with regular students, who have been supportive but have given him space.
“Whenever we go out to eat, people come up all the time,” stated Hampton, Lagway’s childhood friend. “It’s just good luck or that we’re excited for a great season. There’s so much love around all the time.”
In the weeks after arriving on campus, Lagway scheduled the trip to Miami with his teammates. Through an existing sponsorship with Red Bull, he was able to fund their whole way. There, he showed his new teammates what elite preparation looks like, and they embraced him for it.
Between the workouts, Lagway and the new-look skill corps were able to spend time and get to know each other. Instead of athletes facing the rising pressure, they could just be college students making lifelong bonds.
The moment is a significant one for Lagway. One-time transfers are forgivable, but the path is much tougher for multiple transfers. Since 2018, 40 quarterbacks have been ranked in the top 50 in the Top247 rankings. Zero multi-time transfers have even been selected in the NFL Draft. In fact, all 11 quarterbacks to transfer multiple times failed to end their careers as Power Four starters. Lagway chose Baylor and now has to perform.
“I feel like football can be taken so seriously and made so complicated,” Lagway stated. “But at the end of the day, it’s a kid’s game, you know? We’ve gotta go out there and play it and have fun. That’s what we’re called here to do.”
And as Lagway has found his joy, so too has Baylor football. There’s a lightness in the building that contrasts with the droll, tense moments of Aranda’s previous hot-seat years. Over the summer, both of Aranda’s daughters returned to Texas and worked in the football facility. They’ve both flourished since attending the same out-of-state university, and they both hope to work in the athletic field.
Aranda’s seat remains one of the hottest in college athletics. In the recently released CBS Sports Hot Seat ratings, he was one of only three coaches to boast a perfect 5.0. But now, he’s trying to embrace his public face.
Aranda only posted a handful of times on his social media accounts over the past five years. Suddenly, he’s posting almost daily, from short motivational videos to pictures of his family. No one in the athletic department has pushed him to do it, but some suspect his daughters have played a role.
“If this were to end tomorrow for me, I would have loved to win more, but really the thing I would be ashamed of would be that with all of the criticism coming and all of the negative comments, I covered up,” Aranda stated. “I didn’t say much and just tried to say words without saying words. I’ve been doing football for a long time, and this is the most negative it’s ever been by far for me, ever. I just didn’t handle it good.
“If I go out, I want to go out not covering it up but just letting people in, even if it’s awkward. I just don’t want to go out like that.”
Baylor has a tough path just to return to a bowl game in Aranda’s decisive seventh season. They open with Auburn, a familiar SEC foe that handed the Bears a crushing season-opening loss in 2025. If the Bears finish with another losing season, they’ll likely have a new coach in December.
Dave Aranda and DJ Lagway found each other at the most important moment of their careers. And now, they can both help each other find new life.
“I’ve stated it to coach: What do we have to lose?” McNamee stated. “What genuinely is there to lose for the naysayers that already feel like DJ’s career has been written, or for the people who think that this program will not reach its expectations? There’s no pressure. Let’s go, let it rip, let’s play a fun brand of football and see what happens.”
