Dave Aranda said this week that DJ Lagway has "the green light" against Colorado, and he pointed to the Saturday before the Louisiana Tech game, when Lagway worked out on the practice field and, in Aranda's telling, "felt really good." Receiver Jadon Porter, safety Devin Turner and Logan Moore are expected back too. That resolves the question that has hung over Baylor since the opening possession in Atlanta, when Lagway sprained his right ankle, kept playing, and then watched Baylor spend two games without him.
Baylor won both anyway, most recently 36-19 over Louisiana Tech at home. Nate Bennett, making his second straight start in Lagway's place, completed 21 of 24 passes for 253 yards and three touchdowns and scored on a 25-yard scramble on the opening drive. That is not a performance a coaching staff shrugs off. So the interesting thing about this week is that going back to Lagway is a choice, not paperwork.
Aranda has said the ankle injury took numerous designed-quarterback-run calls off the sheet and pushed Baylor into a different third- and fourth-and-short package. That is the part of Jake Spavital's offense Baylor has not seen since Week 1. Watch the short-yardage downs on Saturday. If Lagway is keeping the ball on the goal line and on third-and-2, Baylor has its full menu back for the first time all season. If Baylor is still calling around him, the ankle is managing him rather than the other way around.
The Colorado problem Aranda already described
Aranda spent part of his week praising Brennan Marion's scheme. "We got a lot of respect for him and his schemes. There's some unusual back sets, and there's option, triple option looks coming out of the backfield." Then he explained the cost. Marion's run structure pulls Baylor's safeties downfield to fit the run, and that leaves one-on-one matchups on the outside.
That is a specific request of a specific group, and Baylor's best answer to it is gone. Safety Jacob Redding led the 2025 team with three interceptions and posted 53 tackles, and he tore his ACL less than two hours before the Auburn opener, out for the year, with fifth-year Devin Turner sliding into the strong safety job.
The interior is thin too. With Devonte Tezino lost for the season, Aranda said fifth-years Traevon Mitchell and Braylen Jackson would take more snaps alongside starter Kamren Washington, with Hosea Wheeler at nose. Against Louisiana Tech that group drew mixed reviews and nobody has identified a single replacement for Tezino's role. Colorado's option looks will find out quickly whether the middle holds. If Mitchell and Washington keep Baylor's safeties from having to run downhill every snap, the one-on-ones outside never come up.
What's actually at stake
Kickoff is 11 a.m. Central on ESPN2 at McLane Stadium, with Baylor wearing throwbacks honoring the 1980s and early 1990s, a Bruiser bobblehead for the first 5,000 fans and a postgame concert. Baylor is favored at about 83%, which is a comfortable number and also the kind of number that makes a loss expensive. This is the Big 12 opener for both teams. The 2024 meeting was the one Colorado won 38-31 in overtime after Shedeur Sanders hit LaJohntay Wester with a 43-yard Hail Mary on the last play of regulation and Travis Hunter forced a fumble at the 2-yard line to end Baylor's final possession. Baylor has not won a Big 12 opener since 2022.
The league-title math is thin either way. Winning leaves Baylor around a 2.2% chance of reaching the Big 12 championship game, losing drops it to roughly 0.3%. Neither branch is a season. What a win actually buys is a 3-1 start with Lagway upright before a trip to Arizona State, and it buys Aranda, retained for a seventh season after a university review that came with public expectations of excellence, accountability and competitiveness, a conference opener that looks like the program he described.
He has been blunt about the gap. He wanted "the errors and the mental mistakes and the Baylor beating Baylor stuff behind us moving into Big 12 play," and on identity said the toughness is there but "the smart part, I feel like we're not there yet." Baylor gets to test that claim Saturday morning, with its quarterback back and its full playbook open.
The interactive guide has the week's numbers; the methodology explains where they come from.