It didn't take defensive coordinator Blake Baker long to make a lasting impression in Columbia. The first-year Missouri defensive coordinator has signed a contract extension that would give him a raise north of $400,000 and keep in him in Columbia through the 2025 season.
"I am honored by the trust Coach Drinkwitz has placed in me and I look forward to continuing to contribute to making our team better," Baker said. "Make no mistake about it, this is a reflection of the hard work of our defensive staff and most importantly, our players. We have a resilient group, and it doesn't matter where the ball is put down, they step up and play hard. My family and I love Columbia and we look forward to the years ahead."
"We're really excited about not only Blake but the rest of our defensive staff," Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz said. "He has done a really good job utilizing our scheme and playing well together and making some great calls at the right times. I appreciate our administration and our athletic department and Board of Curators for investing in our program and we are looking forward to Coach Baker being our defensive coordinator for a long time."
Baker's current two-year contract was supposed to jump from $600,000 to $700,00 on March 1, 2023. A source said the new contract is expected to be for three years.
"I think Blake and the staff have done a really good job of maximizing their scheme to defend the styles of offenses that we're playing," Drinkwitz said during his weekly press conference on Tuesday. "There's that versatility there that keeps an offense off balance and you can't predict this is what we're going to have to see this week. And I think in college football, that's probably the most important thing you can do as a defensive scheme."
Baker replaced current Carolina Panthers interim head coach Steve Wilks, who departed for the NFL after spending last season with the Tigers. Wilks made $1.2 million. Baker's salary was considerably less because he was hired as the safeties coach while Wilks was still on staff and later promoted to defensive coordinator.
"The low ego approach of keeping the same calls from last year and getting better at that instead of just coming in and saying ‘We're taking everything we did last year and throwing it away. This is my playbook,’" Drinkwitz said on Tuesday. "We didn't do that. And I think that's helped us be able to get further faster."
Baker, who is previously was a defensive coordinator at Louisiana Tech (2015-18) and Miami (2019-2020), came to Mizzou after spending last season as the linebackers coach at LSU.
In Baker’s first year as defensive coordinator with Louisiana Tech, the Bulldogs led the FBS in takeaways with 42. Up from 26 in 2014. In 2019, Baker helped Miami go to the 17th-best run defense up 26 spots from its ranking the previous season. This season, Missouri has dramatically improved in total defense, scoring defense and run defense.
With Baker's new deal reportedly set to exceed a million dollars, he would be in line with most other defensive coordinators in the conference. Nine of the 11 defensive coordinators in the league whose salaries are publicly available make at least a million dollars annually (Florida actually pays co-coordinators Patrick Toney and Sean Spencer a million apiece). Georgia pays co-coordinators Glen Schumann and Will Muschamp $800,000 each and Zach Arnett makes $900,000 at Mississippi State.
Salaries for the defensive coordinators at Texas A&M and Vanderbilt are not publicly available, though it is believed D.J. Durkin is well above a million dollars a year in College Station.
The league's highest-paid defensive coordinators are LSU's Matt House ($1.9 million) and Arkansas' Barry Odom ($1.85).
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