Robert Griffin III says he would take the vacant head football coach job at Baylor University in Waco if it were offered to him.
“So yeah, I would 100% be interested,” Griffin told the “Dan Patrick Show,” adding that he has already spoken with Baylor athletic director Doug McNamee.
Griffin, who won the Heisman Trophy during his senior season at Baylor in 2011, argued the McLennan County school needs leadership that understands what success there looks like.
“If Baylor wants to get back to winning and have a university that isn’t just respectable on the football field, but one the fans can be proud of, they need people who know what it looks like to win at Baylor,” Griffin said. “I talked with the athletic director, who is a guy in Doug McNamee that knows what it looks like to win at Baylor, know how you have to win at Baylor and recruit to Baylor to make those things happen.”
The job opened up after Baylor parted ways with head coach Dave Aranda following a 4-3 start to the season that included back-to-back losses to TCU and Kansas. The Bears were 4-1 before the skid and currently sit 2-2 in Big 12 play. Defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman has taken over as interim head coach for the rest of the season.
Aranda had been hired in 2020 and led Baylor to a 12-2 record in 2021, the most wins in school history, after the team went 2-7 during the COVID-shortened 2020 season. He was unable to sustain that success in the years that followed.
McNamee and his staff are expected to conduct a wide search for Aranda’s replacement, and it remains unclear whether the university would consider a candidate with no coaching experience, even one as closely tied to the program as Griffin.
Griffin went 25-21 overall during his four years as Baylor’s quarterback but posted a 10-3 record in his Heisman-winning 2011 season, when the Bears also won the Alamo Bowl. He left Baylor as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, taken by the Washington Redskins, and remains the only Heisman Trophy winner in school history.
Griffin has never coached at any level. Since his NFL career ended in 2020, he has worked in sports media, first at ESPN and now at FOX, covering the NFL and college football.
