It's a bit of an understatement, but Baylor was a good team a year ago. The Bears went 11-1 in the regular season (losing only to #10 Oklahoma), before falling to the Sooners again in the conference championship. That kicked Baylor out of the playoff race, but the Bears still headed to the Sugar Bowl.

And for the second year in a row, Tech is opening their season against a Big 12 team that last played on New Year’s Day in the Superdome.

But while Texas head coach Tom Herman stayed with his team after their Sugar Bowl, Baylor head coach Matt Rhule did not. Rhule headed to the Carolina Panthers, and Baylor brought in Dave Aranda to replace him.

As fans who “watched” the 2013 Louisiana Tech “team” know, it sometimes takes some time for a new head coach to find their groove with a new program. And since Aranda has been around as a defensive coordinator for over a decade, I want to find out if he typically suffers from the same stumbles out of the gate that Holtz did when Skip first came to Tech.

Aranda’s first gig as a defensive coordinator was with Hawaii back when the Warriors and Bulldogs were both in the WAC. Aranda was on staff in 2009 as the defensive line coach, but when the then 33-year old took over the entire defense, good things happened.

Defensive Simple Rating System (or DSRS) is a method developed by sports-reference.com that attempts to boil down how good a defense is to a single number, adjusted for strength of schedule. It’s not a perfect system, but the important thing to know is that an average defense should have a score of zero, and higher numbers are better.

So Aranda took over a mildly bad defense and improved them to a just above average squad.

Even if we use more traditional passing/rushing yards per attempt, we see a noticeable difference:

The next year ended up as a dumpster fire for the Warriors (although they still found a way to beat Tech), and Aranda joined Gary Andersen’s staff at Utah State for 2012.

This time, Aranda took an even worse defense and made them even better:

But so far, we’ve only talked about defenses that were bad when he took over. The 2019 Baylor Bears had a top 20 defense in 2019. How good are Aranda defenses when he takes over at a team that wasn’t struggling a year ago?

Well, after the success at Utah State, Gary Pattersen got offered the head coaching job at Wisconsin, and he brought Aranda with him. The 2012 Badger defense that Aranda inherited looked similar to the 2019 Baylor defense that he received going into this season. Both were borderline elite defenses that were a little better at stopping the pass than the run.

So how did it turn out at Wisconsin?

Aranda took over the 20th best defense in the nation according to DSRS, and improved them to 5th.

And a few years later, he did a similar thing at LSU:

Granted, Aranda often has a few ups and downs after that first season at a new school. Maybe he starts to rest on his laurels, or maybe there’s just some fluctuation in talent. Take LSU for example:

Still very good defenses from 2017 on, but not quite the peak he saw when he first arrived in 2016.

So when Tech plays the Bears again in 2022 and 2023 (assuming Aranda is still there), the Bulldogs might see a weaker defense than they will this year. Although that doesn’t really help for this Saturday. Tech will have to face the dominance that is first-year Dave Aranda.

But Aranda does face a new challenge this year: returning production.

On offense, the Bears return nearly everyone, with 70% of their offensive production back for 2020. But on defense, that number is an atrocious 32%.

The Bears lost nine starters on defense (doesn’t that sound familiar) and even more off the bench. The Big-12 Defensive Player of the Year is gone off the D-Line. Only one linebacker returns with any real playing experience. The defensive backs had the least major losses, but there are still some major questions marks.

When Aranda took over at LSU in 2016, he had 86% of the defensive production returning. At Wisconsin, that number was slightly worse (63%), but neither compare to the challenge he faces in Waco.

And so even though Tech is facing a coach who’s historically good at taking over and making immediate defensive improvements, there might just be a way the Bulldogs can help break Aranda’s streak.

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Nathan is also a contributor to gtpdd.dog, a lighthearted Louisiana Tech blog. Be sure to check out @gotechplsdntdie on Twitter.