JD PicKell: Dave Aranda has Baylor ready to achieve more in 2022

Dave Aranda is building something special at Baylor. In just his second season as the Bears coach in 2021, he claimed both a Big 12 championship and Sugar Bowl victory.

Now heading into Year 3, Aranda will look to continue to build upon the success of last year. Although the team loses plenty of key pieces from this past season, On3’s JD PicKell explained in a recent video why the Bears have full trust in their coach heading into 2022. It all has to do with the way Aranda treats his players, and there is no better example of that than quarterback Gerry Bohanon, who transferred to South Florida this offseason.

“The internal pulse of the Baylor Bears is, ‘Run that back turbo,'” PicKell said. “We’re here. There’s no reason for us to take any steps back. We’ve got Dave Aranda running the show. Now, they’re gonna look a little different than they did in 2021. No more Abram Smith. No more Jalen Pitre on defense. No more Terrel Bernard on defense. Those guys were huge for them in 2021. Also, no Gerry Bohanon.

“The interesting piece about this: Gerry Bohanon was the quarterback for Baylor in their 2021 Big 12 Championship season. Dave Aranda made a difficult decision to name Blake Shapen the starting quarterback. Blake Shapen actually played in the Big 12 Championship Game and played really well and ultimately won the job in the spring. Credit to Dave Aranda because this is a story that circulated for a little bit but don’t know if it got enough shine as it should have. He let Gerry Bohanon know before that deadline for him to be able to put his name in the transfer portal.”

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Thanks to the heads up from Dave Aranda, Bohanon was able to leave Baylor and enter the transfer portal before the deadline to give himself a chance to play in 2022. As PicKell pointed out, that is not something that many other coaches would have done and what separates the Bears head man from the crowd.

“A lot of head coaches would have let that ‘competition’ drag on and Gerry Bohanon would have been stuck,” PicKell said. “Wouldn’t have been able to get in the portal and, ‘Oh by the way, Gerry, in fall camp we’re actually gonna go with Blake this year.’ So credit to Dave Aranda doing right by Gerry Bohanon, but that’s really what this whole thing is predicated on. They trust Dave Aranda. They’re bought in. They’re trusting the process. They’re trusting the development of a program. Not just the team. The team in one thing. But Dave Aranda is building a program in Waco and he’s got the buy-in of some big-time talent.”

As far as the likelihood of Baylor repeating as Big 12 champs, the rest of the media world tends to agree with PicKell. The Bears were voted to finish first in the conference’s preseason poll, with Oklahoma coming in second. Those kind of expectations are no doubt a result of their finish last season under Aranda and the future that he is building in Waco.