Lagway debuts at Auburn as Baylor names its first captains in years
DJ Lagway gets the armband and the start in Atlanta, but the depth chart behind him still reads three names deep with no answer.
Baylor names its 2026 captains, and Lagway wears the armband
Camp is over and Baylor came out of it with an answer at the position that matters most: DJ Lagway is QB1, a captain, and the owner of No. 2, one of the single-digit numbers the program reserves for players who've earned it. He arranged 5 a.m. summer workouts for teammates back in Florida before he'd even set foot on a Baylor practice field, and BUFootball's own account made the honor official this week, naming him one of five permanent captains alongside linebacker Kyland Reed, defensive end Kyler Jordan, tight end Matt Klopfenstein and defensive lineman Jamaal Whyce Jr. There's a family thread under the number, too — Lagway's father played running back at Baylor from 1997 to 2001, so the son inherited more than a starting job when he transferred in from Florida.
What camp didn't settle is who backs him up. The depth chart Baylor released August 31 still lists QB2 as "Nate Bennett OR Edward Griffin OR Quinn Murphy" — an actual three-way tie in ink three days before kickoff. Bennett is the only one of the three who has taken a game snap for Baylor, having backed up Sawyer Robertson the last two seasons and won the job outright in preseason 2025; Griffin threw for 6,360 yards and 81 touchdowns at Coppell; Murphy brings 168 career passing touchdowns from Liberty Christian and legs neither of the other two has. Offensive coordinator Jake Spavital says he's watching "the maturity of him just operate and move through progressions," he told On3's Pete Nakos in August, and a depth chart still reading "or" instead of a name says he meant it.
Camp cost Baylor a receiver along the way, per Covers' aggregated injury table: WR T. Williams Jr. is out with a collarbone injury he's expected to miss extended time with, and TE T. Livingston is questionable with a right knee injury heading into Auburn — a designation that only means his availability is in doubt, not decided either way.
Last season ended on a 4-game skid, and the front office turned over right behind it
Baylor's 2025 campaign closed the way too much of the back half of it went — with a loss, 24-31 at home to Houston on November 29. That capped a stretch that also included a 28-55 defeat to Utah and a 17-41 loss at Arizona, with a 30-3 win over UCF in Waco the one signature result sandwiched between three lopsided ones on the way to a 5-7 finish last season.
That finish is exactly why Dave Aranda went and got Lagway, and why he pulled Joe Klanderman off the Kansas State staff to call defense for the first time in two years. The turnover hasn't stopped at the roster and the coaching staff, either: Kevin Goll Leaves Baylor To Launch Yorkshire Drive reports that Baylor's senior associate athletic director since 2021 — a Baylor alum himself — is walking away from his alma mater to start his own coaching and administrator search firm, already fielding calls from other power-conference athletic departments. It's a smaller story than a transfer quarterback, but one more sign that the program that finished 5-7 last season isn't running it back with the same people in any building on campus.
Same opener, a very different Auburn across the field
Baylor and Auburn open the season in a rematch of last year's opener, but Auburn is not who it was when it ran for 307 team yards — including 137 from Jackson Arnold — in a 38-24 win over the Bears in Waco, per Yahoo Sports' scouting report. Auburn fired Hugh Freeze in early November and hired South Florida's Alex Golesh, and the quarterback who beat Baylor left with him: USF transfer Byrum Brown makes his Tigers debut in Atlanta instead of Arnold, and he isn't hiding his confidence about it. "We should be just fine," Brown told reporters this week, adding, "the name of the game is that we should just be us, just be our offense," per Yahoo Sports.
The name that carries over from last year's game is Bryson Washington, who ran for Baylor last season before transferring to Auburn and now lines up in the Tigers' backfield against the defense he used to play behind. Washington is downplaying the reunion — "I look at it as just another game. We've just got to go handle that," he told Yahoo Sports — but Golesh has noticed the edge in his week of practice anyway: "Bryson, the last week, has shown why he's been able to do what he's done for the last couple of years. He's taken steps," the coach said. That's exactly the funnel Klanderman was hired to close; he inherits a Baylor defense that ranked 12th in the Big 12 in yards allowed last season at 392.1 per game and gave up 197.1 rushing yards a week, per Yahoo Sports.
Baylor itself returns just one offensive starter, lineman Kaden Sieracki, per the Auburn Observer — which makes this less a measuring-stick game than two staffs finding out what they actually have at the same time, in what SI's Baylor roundtable is already framing as a make-or-break opener for Aranda entering year seven. He's been selling the moment more than the matchup all week. "There needs to be more stuff like this," he told KXXV of playing the first-ever Aflac Kickoff Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. "I think this is a real positive and it's cool to be a part of the first one of these. Hopefully there's more."
Baylor's opening line says Auburn hasn't fully convinced anybody yet
For a team replacing its quarterback, its coordinator and most of its receiving corps against a first-year staff on the other sideline, Baylor isn't being written off. The line opened with Auburn favored and Baylor an underdog by 6.5 points, a manageable number for a program that just finished 5-7 and is breaking in a transfer quarterback on the road.
The total opened at 59.5, and a high-scoring read fits two rebuilt offenses still figuring out their own identity before they figure out each other's. Baylor plays this afternoon at Auburn to open the season, and whichever quarterback debut looks better by the fourth quarter will say a lot about which rebuild is further along.