Fifteen months after a freshman season that made him look like the future of Florida football, DJ Lagway takes his first snap for a different program entirely, and Today’s opener against Auburn will offer the first real answer to whether leaving Gainesville actually fixed what went wrong.
The freshman season that raised expectations impossibly high
DJ Lagway arrived at Florida in 2024 as a five star recruit ranked among the top prospects in the entire class, expected to eventually take over from starter Graham Mertz. He got that chance sooner than planned when Mertz suffered a season ending injury in the team’s sixth game. Thrown into the starting role as a true freshman, DJ Lagway responded by leading the Gators to a 5 and 1 finish over their final six games, including wins over a top 10 Ole Miss team and a ranked LSU squad, capped by a lopsided bowl win. It was the kind of debut that made a Heisman conversation for his sophomore year feel reasonable rather than premature.
A sophomore season that unraveled on and off the field
That conversation never really got started. DJ Lagway entered 2025 dealing with nagging injuries and was held to just over 200 passing yards in a stunning loss to South Florida, the first defeat to that program in Florida’s history. A five interception performance against a top ranked LSU team followed the very next week. He ultimately played all 12 games, finishing with 2,264 yards, 16 touchdowns and 14 interceptions as Florida collapsed to a 4 and 8 record that cost head coach Billy Napier his job seven games into the season.
Away from the field, DJ Lagway has since described the year in more personal terms, telling reporters he felt isolated and closed off during his time in Gainesville, that he rarely left his own routine to spend time with teammates, and that he was, in his own words, dealing with depression during that stretch. He has said he did not even know what most of the campus looked like before deciding to transfer, and that attending in person classes at Baylor marks the first time he has done so since starting college.
Why Baylor, specifically
The fit made sense on more than one level once Napier was let go. Waco sits a little over two hours from DJ Lagway’s hometown of Willis, Texas, and his father Derek Lagway played running back for Baylor in the late 1990s, giving the move a family thread as well as a geographic one.
Offensive coordinator Jake Spavital was another specific draw. Spavital has a track record of developing quarterbacks, including helping Baylor’s Sawyer Robertson emerge as one of the better passers in the sport over the past two seasons, along with earlier work with Geno Smith at West Virginia and Heisman winner Johnny Manziel at Texas A&M. He also previously coached another Florida transfer quarterback, Will Grier, into a productive Big 12 passer at West Virginia, a parallel DJ Lagway is clearly hoping to repeat.
Tebow’s take on the move
Florida legend Tim Tebow addressed the transfer publicly ahead of the opener, saying he believes DJ Lagway simply needed a new environment after facing more pressure in Gainesville than the support system around him could match. Tebow described DJ Lagway as a talented, likable young man who was never given enough of a chance to share the weight when things went wrong, and said he expects a fresh setting to let him play with more freedom and get closer to his real ceiling.
What’s actually on the line Today
The opener carries real stakes beyond one quarterback’s redemption story. Auburn enters its own new era under first year coach Alex Golesh, who arrives after a successful run at South Florida, the same program that handed Florida that historic upset last season, and brings starting quarterback Byrum Brown with him.
Baylor’s Dave Aranda, meanwhile, is working with a losing record over his tenure and coming off a disappointing 5 and 7 season, making this something close to a must win start for his own job security. Auburn beat Baylor by two touchdowns in last year’s meeting, and oddsmakers list Auburn as roughly a touchdown favorite again this time, with most public predictions leaning toward another Auburn win. A Baylor victory would do more than validate DJ Lagway’s decision to transfer. It would also put the Bears in position to enter Big 12 play unbeaten. Kickoff is set for 3.30 p.m. Eastern at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, airing nationally on ABC.
