Former Florida QB DJ Lagway Continues Roller Coaster Portal Recruitment

After reportedly committing to Baylor but continuing to take visits, DJ Lagway's recruitment in the transfer portal has taken yet another turn.

Former Florida quarterback DJ Lagway has had a whirlwind recruitment in the transfer portal. | Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The recruitment of former Florida Gators starting quarterback DJ Lagway continues to be one of the more hectic this portal cycle, recently being named as a potential target for the Duke Blue Devils despite multiple reports that he was trending towards signing with Baylor.

Sources tell me and @chris_hummer that one of the quarterbacks now of interest to Duke as a potential replacement for Darian Mensah is former Florida star QB DJ Lagway, who has been on the verge of heading to Baylor but hasn’t signed yet pic.twitter.com/GUul8Mrbd7

— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) January 17, 2026

Lagway, the 247 Sports' 14th best overall transfer, was originally reported by multiple outlets to have committed to Baylor after visiting the campus on Jan. 7. However, ESPN’s Pete Thamel would later report that Lagway was not officially committed to the Bears and that the quarterback planned to take other visits, with the former five-star taking a trip to Ole Miss a few days later.

After the visit in Oxford, Lagway was again reported to be trending towards signing with Baylor, the school his father played for in the late 90’s, before the more recent report that he is now a name to watch for Duke. The Blue Devil’s interest comes just hours after their star quarterback Darian Mensah announced his plans to enter the portal the day of its deadline.

Lagway has been busy during his time in the portal, visiting multiple schools including the previously mentioned trips to Ole Miss and Baylor, along with a stop in Virginia as well as Tallahassee to see a Gators' instate rival, Florida State. Once one of the more sought-after prospects in the country out of high school, he now continues to look for a new home after finishing his time in Gainesville completing just 62 percent of his passes for 4,179 yards, 28 touchdowns and 23 interceptions.

It had once looked like the Gators starter planned to stay with the program heading into the offseason, with Lagway announcing he was ‘a Gator’ during multiple media availabilities. Regardless, the rising Junior would end up leaving the school after a meeting with new head coach Jon Sumrall reportedly did not go well.

“When I met with DJ, I just said, ‘Hey, look, man. This culture is going to be built on toughness and love of football. If you fit that, great. If you don’t, then that’s not going to be good.’ I said, ‘Let’s talk through what this is going to look like moving forward. Would love to have you stay here, if you’re comfortable with some ground rules that are laid out,’” Sumrall said recently on the meeting. “It was his decision to leave. He was not forced out of here, by any stretch of the imagination. I’m for him being successful wherever he goes next – unless we play against him at some point.”

Ironically, Lagway could now be the replacement for a quarterback in Mensah that Sumrall coached and recently compared the former Gators departure to.

"I've had players I've coached that have left me, Darian Mensah was my quarterback at Tulane, 2024. I hope Darian Mensah has great success his entire career, unless I coach against him, and I want him to lose." Sumrall said. “We played against Darian, you know what he did, he lost."

As of now, neither have officially committed, but Lagway’s portal recruitment continuing to be unpredictable until its last moments.