DJ Lagway said his time with the Florida Gators left him so shaken that he told his mother, “I think God forgot about me.” The quarterback, once viewed as the No. 1 name in the 2024 recruiting class, said the pressure and disappointment of his only season as Florida’s starter broke him down.
That is why his name is surfacing again now. Lagway entered the transfer portal after that season and ended up at Baylor, where he says he is smiling more, laughing more and better able to breathe in Jake Spavital’s spread scheme. He called it a “spread-it-out and air-it-out kind of offense,” and said it is “perfect” for him.
Lagway’s words land hardest because they are not coming from a player who flamed out quietly. He arrived at Florida carrying the kind of expectation that can warp a program’s season around one arm and one face. During 2024, he was supposed to be the answer. Instead, he struggled, and after a 20-10 loss at LSU he told his mother he thought God had forgotten him.
That is where Billy Napier comes back into the story. The former Florida head coach did not do nearly enough to help Lagway, and the contrast between what Florida offered and what Baylor is offering is stark. At Florida, Lagway was stuck in a pro-style offense that did not fit him as cleanly; at Baylor, the spread system gives him space, tempo and easier reads, the sort of structure that lets a quarterback play fast instead of burdened.
There is a cruel irony in how the story has turned. Lagway was once seen by many as the savior of the Florida Gators’ football program, yet he now sounds like a player who has found relief only after leaving it. He is in a better headspace at Baylor, while Florida moves on under Jon Sumrall and prepares to begin a new era against the Florida Atlantic Owls on Saturday night.
What happens next is simple enough to measure and hard enough to ignore: Lagway’s rebound will be judged on the field at Baylor, and Florida will have to answer whether the quarterback it could not fully lift is the one it let get away.
