Blake Baker worked virtual miracles earlier this decade as Missouri’s defensive coordinator and still fielded an elite unit this year at LSU, despite getting as much help from the Tigers’s offense as a house of cards in a wind tunnel.

He works. His system works.

And, now, sources tell FootballScoop, Baker’s system has a chance to be the defense of choice for incoming LSU head coach Lane Kiffin. 

Several people tell FootballScoop that Kiffin already has conveyed to Baker, a Tulane alum and Houston, Texas, native, that he would like for Baker to continue as LSU’s defensive coordinator in the Kiffin regime.

Baker, signed through the end of the 2026 season and among college football’s highest-paid coordinators on either side of the ball, helped LSU post college football’s No. 16 scoring defense at 18.45 points per game and No. 23 overall team defense at 313 ypg in 2025 despite the Tigers getting almost no help from Joe Sloan’s LSU offense, which finished 104th nationally in scoring at less than 23 ppg.

Kiffin, several sources tell FootballScoop, is bringing Charlie Weis Jr. to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to run the Tigers’s offense.

Baker helped Missouri, under coach Eli Drinkwitz, win 18 games in two seasons in Columbia, Missouri, a span that included Missouri’s stunning, 14-3 upset of Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl.

That contest marked the first time in almost a decade — 2016 — that Ohio State had been held without a touchdown.

Baker also has coordinated defenses at Miami and Louisiana Tech.

With deep ties to New Orleans, Baker is also expected to be among the candidates to replace departing Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall, who will coach the Green Wave in next week’s American Athletic Conference Championship and potentially into the College Football Playoffs but who also already has accepted the University of Florida head coach’s position.