Baker’s family, ‘unfinished business’ kept him at LSU

By Hunt Palmer

Tulane made Blake Baker an offer. So did LSU.

Ultimately the team under his own roof won out.

“It starts with, honestly, my family, sitting and talking to them,” Baker told Jacob Hester and Matt Flynn on Off the Bench. “The kids are 10, 8 and 6 now, hearing their input. We’re extremely happy here and love the community, love the support of Baton Rouge, and obviously being close to family. All those things play a major role especially as many times as we’ve moved over the lats five years. I think that’s where it started. Everything else is probably lagniappe.”

The Bakers moved in 2021, 2022 and 2024. A move to New Orleans would have been four in five years for a young family. Baker readily admits his ultimate goal is to be a head coach, but Tulane, his alma mater, wasn’t the right fit at the right time.

Coordinators at the highest level of college football can catapult themselves to power conference jobs. It happens annually. Marcus Freeman was a coordinator when he got the Notre Dame job. Will Stein leapt from his coordinator job at Oregon to the Kentucky job last week. Kirby Smart and Ryan Day run perhaps the two best programs in the country. Both were coordinators prior to landing the Georgia and Ohio state jobs.

“I see myself on the Kirby Smart plan,” Baker said. “If I don’t get kicked out of here first, when I leave this job, I want it to be the ultimate stop, the final destination. I get it, as coaches we don’t necessarily always control that, but I don’t want to look at it as a job where I’m moving and having to move again. I think that’s what this place LSU, and obviously being with Lane, I think that’s what it can provide. I think if we do what we’re capable of doing and know what this place is capable of doing, I think those opportunities will come up.”

Baker is quite clearly talking about competing for championships, something LSU has not done since hoisting the national championship hardware in 2019. Baker has helped take LSU from the 108th total defense in the country to the No. 15 scoring defense.

The work is not done.

“I feel like we have unfinished business here, not only from an overall team standpoint, but from a defensive standpoint,” Baker said. “You look at the improvements from year one to year two, I really want to see this thing through. I think we’re an ascending football program.”

Part of that ascension comes from the freshman class that inked last week. LSU signed eight defensive players including four elite defensive linemen. Baker played a large part in getting all four of those recruitments over the finish line as none of them signed on Wednesday.

Those discussions also impacted his decision to stay in Baton Rouge.

“You’re sitting here, and you’re telling guys that you’re going to be here next year and we need you to sign on the dotted line, and I just couldn’t look at myself in the mirror and say those things and up and leave in the next 24 hours,” Baker said. “When I first took this job two years ago, it’s what I said when I took it. This place has to get back to what LSU has always been known for on the defensive side of the ball. It starts up front, and I do believe from the bottom of my heart, we’ll find out in three years, but I do believe we signed the best defensive line class in the country. It starts in state, and we were able to spread our wings here and there. Very, pleased overall with our class and especially up front.”

Much of that class will enroll early and take part in LSU’s first spring practices under new head coach Lane Kiffin. Kiffin will take over an offense that held LSU back in 2025. The Tigers failed to score more than 25 points in any FBS game, a first in decades.

Baker has locked horns with Kiffin and new offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. the last two seasons. That will be a daily occurrence on the practice field.

“When you’re surrounded by great coaches, all of us are ultra competitors, and having gone against Lane and Charlie Weis a few times, I think it will be pretty spirited out there,” Baker said.

Kiffin’s arrival allows Baker to observe another successful head coach up close. Eli Drinkwitz has won 29 games over the last three season at Missouri. Brian Kelly is Notre Dame’s all-time winningest head coach. Kiffin brought Ole Miss to the playoff. Baker will have had a chance to learn from all three as he climbs the coaching ranks.

Now just wasn’t the time to jump.

“I’ve always been preparing my whole career to make that jump and be a head coach, taking meticulous notes on how certain coaches I’ve been around do certain things and what seems to work and what fits my personality,” Baker said. “So, I do think it’s going to give me a unique perspective from that standpoint as an overall head coach.”