How Joe Klanderman Plans to Create More Turnovers and Havoc Plays for Baylor in 2026

This would help the Bears win more games.

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On top of having one of the worst defenses in college football last season, Baylor struggled to force turnovers. The Bears allowed the 122nd most points scored against them last year, allowing 32.6 points per game, but Baylor also gained just 11 turnovers in 12 games, which was 112th in the country.

In hopes of restoring a strong defense, Dave Aranda made the move to hire Joe Klanderman as his new defensive coordinator. Aranda had been calling the defensive plays as the head coach, but after a 5-7 season, Aranda is going to take a step back and become a CEO to the team, allowing his coordinators to take over.

Klanderman isn't just a great defensive mind, but his teams typically rank toward the top of the Big 12 in both sacks and turnovers generated. In the last five seasons, the 'Cats ranked second in sacks twice, and ranked in the top three in turnovers generated three times, along with leading the Big 12 in 2022.

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How is Klanderman going to bring that to Waco? It's all about recruiting and allowing his defense to attack.

"We're recruiting. No, I mean, that's the philosophy of what we're trying to do," said Klanderman. "One of the things we're talking about a little bit now is havoc rate, which is all the things that would show up on a stat sheet. And we're trying to create that by letting those D-Linemen rumble.

"And we're more of an attacking style than we are a reacting style. So that's helped. And I think the more these guys just, I'm not trying to overwhelm them with volume of things that we do. So the more they just understand these techniques, the harder they're gonna play, the prouder people are gonna be of them."

Klanderman wants his defense to win games

It's not too often that Baylor's defense wins it games. In order for the Bears to win, they needed Sawyer Robertson to have 350 passing yards and throw three scores. Baylor usually had to outscore its opponent, but with Klanderman leading the charge, he wants his defense to win them games this year.

Between creating turnovers, generating sacks, and attacking — he thinks it's possible. As far as last year's Baylor defense, Klanderman said he's not above taking some of the things that worked, like some of Aranda's blitz packages.

"I didn't spend a lot of time watching, to be honest," Klanderman said of Baylor's defense last year. "One thing that we would always do at K-State with Baylor is, they always had some interesting blitz paths. And I'm not above copycatting some of those if we need to. So that was always something that we checked with them. I think the biggest thing that I wanted to do was just establish an identity with these guys.

"I think their offense has been phenomenal. It's awesome. It's fun to go against them. It's fun to watch them. They were hard to stop on the other side. And I don't want the defense to be an afterthought to that. I want to win games on defense. And I want these guys to know and believe that they can do that.

"So I'm just trying to get them, as Coach is trying to put it in their heads, I want them to be tough. I want them to be smart. I want them to be dependable so that they can go out there and have confidence that we can get that stop. We can get that game. If the offense is having a tough day, we can win this thing 10 to 3. That's the hope."