Should Baylor Bears Coach Dave Aranda Be His Own Defensive Coordinator?
Baylor coach Dave Aranda announced this week that he would be calling the plays defensively in the Bears' Armed Forces Bowl matchup against the Air Force Falcons. With still no replacement for ousted defensive coordinator, Ron Roberts, could Aranda assume the role himself full-time?
It is certainly something we rarely see in college football. In the NFL, it’s a move made famous by Patriots legend Bill Belichick. Belichick oversees the defense the way a coordinator would but has someone else call the plays from the sideline.
You’d think, like Belichick, Aranda’s defensive prowess would mean that any coordinator he hires will be under his own preplanned system anyway. So it might not be a terribly crazy idea that he just assumes the role himself.
The only real recent example was when Iowa State Cyclones head coach Matt Campbell opted to not replace Tom Manning as offensive coordinator in 2018. Instead, he left play-calling duties to an assistant. That season, the Cyclones won eight games and averaged 27 points a contest, and had one of their best overall seasons in program history.
Maybe the biggest difference between these two examples is the reason why they left a coordinator position idle. Kimball left the office of coordinator spot open because the Cyclones were coming off of a very successful season, their best in decades, in fact.
He wanted to keep continuity in the locker room and in the position rooms and not try to change too much when Manning left to coach tight ends for the Indianapolis Colts. Even Campbell probably couldn’t realize how well that would work in his favor when Manning came back just one year later in 2019.
Aranda, on the other hand, actually fired Ron Roberts as the defensive coordinator.
Based on the season, it seems like continuity is the last thing Dave Aranda wants for his defense. Roberts has a long-lasting relationship with Aranda, and while he was the one to give the Baylor coach a coordinating opportunity 15 years ago, it’s unlikely that Roberts was defying the head coach.
The Armed Forces Bowl will certainly be an interesting test for Aranda the coordinator. In the space of about a month, the Bears went from one of the best defenses against the run in the conference to just average, finishing middle of the pack and allowing over 155 rushing yards a game.
Aranda isn’t like Belichick, in that Belichick's way is the only way, and he can find anyone to coach any position, as long as it’s his way.
From all we have seen in three years in Waco, that is not how Aranda coaches the game.
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Covering Baylor for Inside The Bears and the Locked on Baylor podcast. You can follow me for more Baylor content at @realcamstuart on Twitter. Originally from Rockland, Massachusetts and a Baylor alum, so I might mix the occasional bias and/or Boston sports tweet in there every once in a while.