Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Jalon Daniels and Kansas Jayhawks Football Ready to Rock with Chip on Their Shoulder in 2023

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Big 12 media days takeaways one week later for Kansas Jayhawks Football, including the confidence and abilities of KU quarterback Jalon Daniels to Lance Leipold and the staff's continuity and commissioner Brett Yormark's comments on weekday games and conference expansion/realignment.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply.eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit. eBay Motors dot com. Let’s ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. You can give me a follow on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen. Every day we are free and available wherever any of your podcasts. Like and subscribe to the show there. Also like and subscribe to the show on our YouTube page.

And thank you to all the everydayers out there tuning in to all the content each and every day as part of Locked on Jayhawks. On today's edition of the show, it's been a week since Big 12 Media Day is wrapped up in Dallas down at Jerry World at AT&T Stadium. What were some of the biggest takeaways from the event, especially with another week to kind of sit on it and think about maybe more what certain stuff means and hear even more audio just kind of you know from stuff archived away i want to talk specifically about jaylen daniels ku staff kind of the underdog mentality of this team and brett your mark some of the interesting things that he said about the big 12 in general let's start right with jaylen daniels the quarterback because he kind of stole the show, both from a literal perspective and kind of figurative perspective. From the literal perspective, he stole the show with his garb. He was wearing the awesome suit, dressed very nicely.

And mainly, this is what you saw all over social media as well. He was wearing a $50,000 chain, and attached it was an, an Apple watch with like rolling highlights of him. And it also had like a, I think like a Heisman trophy or something on there. It was really cool to look at. I got to interview Jalen, which was awesome standing right across from him, got to see the highlights.

It was an awesome thing. So that stole the show on its own way. But I think he also just steals the show in general because he is such a, you know, sometimes the word cocky can have a negative connotation to it and there are other words for like people who are confident like but it has a positive connotation like bravado for instance or swagger jaylen daniels has bravado he has swagger he is a confident guy you get confident answers when you're talking to him. But at the same point, you can tell he's still a humble guy in a lot of ways. And you still get a genuine, kind nature about him when you're talking to him.

To where even when he's saying something confident, there are some people you talk to and they say something confident. And you're just like, oh, man, I don't know. That guy's rubbing me the wrong way. With Jalen, he'll say something confident and you're just like, oh man, I don't know, that guy's rubbing me the wrong way. With Jalen, he'll say something confident and it makes you smile. It makes you feel lifted up even more. It like brings up the confidence level of yourself as well. So he steals the shot regard just to begin with.

Just such a great explosive personality, such a fun-loving confidence to him. And he talked about a couple things that I thought were really interesting. One of them was being smart to get through the season with hits and matt gildersleeve the strength and conditioning coach at ku making him bulletproof we heard that comment back in the offseason he repeated it during the big 12 media days making him bulletproof getting his body right eating better being more disciplined that's

something he talked about too like giving up fast food or you know having the occasional cheat day but he's big on sweets and having to give that stuff up and uh outside of like cheat days and stuff to where you know you're getting your body right you're getting your mind right you're you're getting your weight right all those sorts of things to make it so that you can get through the season both as a quarterback and specifically in the system that KU runs with this option type game that the quarterback is going to be more up for being hit as a runner is part of the speed option. Like they're, that's just going to be part of the game. They're taking hits, but also him talking about, you know, being smart, getting through the season with hits, like knowing when to slide at certain times, knowing when to

get out of bounds at certain times. It was interesting. Part of the radio interview that I got to do with Jalen, I asked him to draw up a dream winning play in your head. You're in the Big 12 championship game. You have one play to win a game to score a touchdown. And one of the things he mentioned, he was like, where are we on the yard line? Are we on the 10?

Are we on the three? Are we on the two? He was like, anything outside of the two yard line, I'm not running. And that's different. I mean, you're talking about a guy who had a handful plus of rushing touchdowns last year. Obviously once you get in game and you're running the ball and you take off and you know, that's your only way to go. Everybody's covered. And you're like, I'll just run and try to score it. It is a different mentality, but it tells you the idea of, you know, cause he was like anything I'm throwing the ball um that it seems like there's

going to be more of a conscious effort both from him and the coaching staff that he's not accumulating as many hits and it's a it's a tight line to go on because he is such a good runner in addition to being a good passer uh we've heard andy kodelnicki before talk about how he has the same vision of a running back so you don't want to completely disregard that and take that away because that's part of what makes him such a dynamic player with his ability to do both but you want to keep make a few hits away here or there and basically have those specifically like the goal line level hits um be where you know it's it's one thing to run in the open field around the 40 yard line where maybe there's more space once you get to the goal line if you're going to be running there's a much better chance you're going to actually get hit whether you get in the end zone or not those are things that i

found very interesting in ways to kind of try to keep him healthy over the course of the season he also talked about wanting to come back there to that specific place because that's where the big 12 championship is and not just you know come there for media day but come and throw some touchdowns there that'd be a lot of fun to play in a big 12 championship is, and not just come there for media day, but come and throw some touchdowns there. That would be a lot of fun to play in a Big 12 championship. And it's just something that if this group of players, if this core of players ever reaches a Big 12 championship game, which you can say what you want, that, oh, they're picked ninth in the Big 12. Like, you know, this team that won six games last year.

Are they, is that unreasonable to think you can play in a Big 12 championship game? I don't know, man. Like, I've been predicting this team to to win seven games i don't have them predicted to go to the big talk championship game but i don't think it's unreasonable at all oklahoma's being picked as one of the top three teams in the big 12 they won six games a year ago right um now there are some differences there but you know when you look at it for kansas like there's not that big of a difference between maybe some of the teams that are being picked in the top five or six of the Big 12 versus teams that are being picked 10th or 11th.

A lot of times the difference is just who does best that specific year in one-score games. Iowa State and OU, Iowa State didn't make a bowl. OU won six games. They'll struggle last year because they struggled in one-score games. Meanwhile, TCU goes undefeated in one-score games. Texas Tech does well in one-score games. Those teams did really well a season ago. Typically, typically the big 12 all the teams are so close together that a lot of these games

are going to be decided by one score so the teams that the team that won the big 12 from the year before baylor they did great in one score games the teams that happen to do great that specific year in one score games some of it can be a fluky nature some of it can be luck maybe turnover luck ball bounces your way another part of teams that do bad close games though are well coached well disciplined teams which I think of that for Kansas because I have a lot of respect for Lance Leipold and teams with good quarterbacks because if you're in a close game and you have the good quarterback who's making the good decisions late you're going to win more of the close games well Kansas has that too so would it be that crazy if Kansas just

reeled off an incredible season? I mean, obviously the defense has to get better. That's the big thing that I think is kind of the ball and chain here. But if the defense does become an average defense and you have those things going your way with a great offense with that great possibility to be good in one score games, why couldn't you be a contender for the Big 12 title? It's not that crazy

at all. So getting to come back there and if it ever does happen, we're going to circle back to this story a lot. Not just that one from Jalen, but also you go back to 2021. Kansas had just beaten Texas in Austin. The next week, they went to Fort Worth to play TCU. And as part of the trip, they stopped in Jerry World and AT&T Stadium toward the facility. And at that moment, Kansas was a 2-8 football team. They ended up finishing 2-10 after losing the final two games. It's hard to be like, man, that's a big jump to be like,

hey, just envision what it'd be like to play in a Big 12 championship here when you're sitting at 2-10. But you look at how rapidly things have progressed in Lawrence, and you look at how much things have grown, and if they ever are to do it this year or next year or something with this group of players, we're going to look back to that story and be like, that was kind of the start of the the motivation to all this but now I think for Jalen it just becomes about living up to the hype of being preseason offensive player of the year uh the

last player to win one of these for Kansas Dorrance Armstrong was a preseason defensive player of the year I want to say it was like 2016 and he ended up not being I believe first team all big 12 at the end of the year now he was dealing with a lot of double teams, triple teams, and it's different. It's different. Uh, the quarterback position versus the end quarterback's the most important, most difficult position in football. And if you're even like a all third team, big 12 quarterback, your impact is going to be possibly more than being an all big 12 first team defensive end possibly right so the impact here is different um and it's also different that like you can't double team jaylen daniels like you can defense but it's not like with doran's armstrong it's just like oh we'll double team him and put a running back over there and put a tight end over there like what you can't

really do that with a quarterback necessarily so it is different but if he can live up to the hype if you're winning offensive player of the year that comes with winning a lot of games in the postseason version now is it a chicken and egg thing is it you win a lot of games because the player had that type of season or does the player have that type of season and you win a lot of games so you win the award however you want to skin it if he lives up to that hype it probably means KU had an 8-9 or 10 win season which is pretty incredible but the beauty of this is that even if even if you quote-unquote fall short of the hype where you're a third team all big 12 quarterback you're an honorable mention

all big 12 quarterback your second team all big 12 as opposed to being first team like maybe you're projected now that still would mean a really impactful season and meaning KU is going to probably win a lot of games. So now it just becomes about living up to that hype or at least getting close to it. Because if you do, that means you're going to have a great season. That means the team is going to have a great season with KU. All right, let's get on to some other takeaways from the KU staff,

the team as a whole, their underdog mentality, and we'll finish up with Brett Yormark. First, though, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. These days, every new potential hire can feel like a high-stakes wager for your small business. You want to be 100% certain that you have access to the best qualified candidates available. That's why you have to check out LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the right people for your team faster and for free.

You know, I'm going on LinkedIn a good amount. I'm checking what, you know, my colleagues, friends are up to. Maybe I'm posting stuff with some of my new work experience. And I can tell you, sometimes you see some job listings that are there and you can tell which ones are the good ones and which ones are the ones that were just kind of strung together last minute and just kind of, you know, uncreativity, that's not a word, but whatever put together. With LinkedIn, it's super easy to put a job post together and it's going to look super professional and you're going to get a lot more hits and traction on it, which means you're going to have a lot more people that you're going to be able to screen through and pick the best candidate for you. Just add your job in the purple hashtag hiring frame from your LinkedIn profile to spread the word that you're hiring. Simple tools like screening questions make it easy to focus on candidates with just the right skills and experience so you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire. over the offseason that can kind of boost the team but not be a potential pain in the locker room.

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from big two days for uh ku football um you know this was a comment lance leipold talked about the first time in 20 years that the full staff returned, not just head coach, not just head coach and the coordinators, the entirety of it, position groups, everybody returned for KU. And I think this is a stat that probably, like that stat is probably not one that a lot of colleges have a long track record of success. Like, you know, you think about Alabama, like they're having so much success, coaches are just getting hired other places it's a lot of the best colleges have staff continuity but usually like maybe there'll be one or two moves so it's probably not that unusual that a

lot of other schools don't have it like if you just go back to two years their staff being the same two years later but for ku it is even more uh differentiated because ku in the past i mean we heard from robostic he had like six position coaches or seven position coaches or something in like six years um the difference of what ku was before was that they had the least staff continuity basically in the country now they have like the most the difference there is is titanic it is gargantuan it is monstrous i don't know whatever giant words um and you know i i do think that is something we could be sleeping on when you look at players improving specifically when we're talking about

the defense how much is the defense going to improve from from last year to this year well one thing to look at is the staff continuity probably helps with development having the same message consistently doing the same thing over and over again that's how you get one percent better every day that's how you get a little bit better so having that staff continuity i would think makes development even easier and stronger for those specific players maybe there will be a bigger jump from some of the players this year than than maybe we might have thought so um i think that's good also uh we heard a lot from a lot of different ways, kind of talking about playing with a chip on their shoulder.

You know, even Jalen Daniels, Devin Neal kind of talked about that and doing it last year and kind of trying to have that still same mentality this year too. I think we heard it even most from the defense, which makes sense, right? I mean, the defense struggled in a lot of statistical categories. They were at the bottom of the league or near the bottom of the league a season ago. And I will say they did improve by about a touchdown from the year before. So they did show improvement. And if they can do that again this year, that's going to be probably more than enough paired with what their offense is to have a

uber successful season. But I think that's good to see. You heard it from Rich Miller, Kenny Logan playing with that chip on their shoulder that is a good thing for this kansas defense and you know brian borland was a really good defensive coordinator at buffalo like he had a lot of great defenses at buffalo i don't think that all of a sudden that acumen has just gone away i think a lot of times when we hear about you know things that have gone wrong for the defense it's just that um sometimes like people have messed stuff up like uh maybe the scheme uh for because you know talking to brandon mcanderson he talked about how some of the orange bowl teams the scheme defensively wasn't like overly complicated in terms of it was basically a base scheme we're gonna do this and we're gonna have

slight adjustments based on the the team and the scheme we're playing against but we're gonna do what we do as good as we possibly can. And that's going to be good. I mean, that defense was really good, right? If you can maximize simplicity. If you've ever seen the movie Gyro Dreams of Sushi, maximize simplicity and you're going to be really good at it. And that's kind of what Portland sometimes tries to do with the defense. But if you're missing certain roles or things that you're supposed to be doing,

it's hard to maximize that simplicity. Maybe another year in the program can help with that, and certainly having that chip on their shoulder is not a bad thing. The other mention I wanted to make here, very definitive comment from Lance Leipold about Andy Kolnicki, that he'll be a head coach one day. Obviously not a surprise. Had a great offense, very creative on the offensive side of the ball.

It's just the emphatic nature of him saying it makes me think it's going to be sooner rather than later if KU does that you know if I'm Andy Kotelnicki I might just be like tying myself to Jalen Daniels where I'm like if Jalen's gone after this year if he goes pro after this year yeah maybe that's when I find the head coaching job otherwise if he comes back another year maybe I'm back another year and you know then we'll capitalize on that um We heard he had some head coaching interest this past offseason, but ended up getting extended at Kansas. So it's not surprising, but it does make you think you do have a much more limited time here with Andy Kotelnicki and with as good of offensive talent as you had mixed with his brain

on the offensive side of the ball for this year. It makes you want to take advantage of this season, capitalize as many wins as you possibly can, so that you're taking advantage as much as possible of having that elite offense. I don't want to finish things up here with Locked on Jayhawks, talking about some of Brett Yormark, the Big 12 Commissioner's comments and some takeaways there from Big 12 Media Days. I'm finishing things up with Locked on Jayhawks. Some of the things Brett Yormark had to say, the Big 12 commissioner, definitely was weird when he played the Big 12 spot twice.

But nonetheless, he talked about the extension for AT&T and football through I think like 2030 for the Big 12 championship. Cool with that. It sounds like he does want to stay in Kansas City for basketball. And that's interesting because there was some, I don't know, scuttlebutt I guess around the Big 12 tournament that maybe there was talk about moving it. And, you know, I don't know if it was the crowd or the show up or he hadn't experienced the Big 12 tournament before. And he saw how great it was being in Kansas City.

I don't know if it was people talking to him about how when it was in the past in like Dallas and Oklahoma City, it wasn't a great turnout. But it sounds like that's going to be a thing for the future. They're already under contract for another, you know, almost handful of years for in Kansas city, but it sounds like they do want to extend it, which I think is a great thing. Obviously it's great for us being,

you know, here in Lawrence and people who are KU supporters who live in the Olathe, Kansas city, Lawrence area to get out there. But, you know, you get such great attendance with Iowa State you

get great attendance with KU K State makes good attendance at like it just makes so much sense to continue to have it here now something else he mentioned that was very interesting he talked about Thursday slash Friday like basically weekday games in the Big 12 I was not under the assumption that would happen this year that they're gonna like flex anything I'm kind of under the assumption that would happen this year that they're going to like flex anything. I'm kind of under the assumption that I'll start like next year. On one hand, it's kind of smart. Capitalize on your TV window where you can have the standalone game and, you know, talk about your conference and your teams and stuff like that. But I don't know.

That feels a little mid-major-y to me with some of the conferences. And I'm not really a fan. I'm actually all for it. If you want to do like a Thursday night game. I don't like the Friday night games. I just don't. I mean, personally, I cover high school football, so that makes for kind of a pain on, on my end of things. And you know, that's one person's, but if you're a high school football player, you're not going to be watching the game. You're going to be playing in a high school game. So like the idea of having

a more eyeballs on you, more recruits watching, well, there's not going to be as many recruits watching you. So I don't know. I understand some of the positives of it, but I'm not really fully in on it either. I guess if it's just like one Friday game a year, KU is already playing two of them this year. Then, okay, whatever. Like, we'll deal with it. And then the expansion stuff was the biggest stuff that Bray Yormark kind of harped on. He kind of talked about how they're cool at 12.

They like 14, but they're not chasing a number. Basically how I took that, because they are kind of counterintuitive statements like, oh, we'd love to be a 14, but we're not going to go for it. Like, we're fine being a 12. Is that they're not going to go out of their way to get the 14th in terms of like maybe some of the talk with Gonzagaaga or memphis or some of these schools maybe they're not going to go out of their way to say we just need 14 so we're just going to add whatever two schools that are best that are interested in coming i view it more as they're saying we're cool at 12 so we can be selective

and a bit picky and choosy and if we can add two that we really want, like a Colorado, like an Arizona, maybe like a Yukon, I don't know which bucket they would drop into. Then we will absolutely take them, but we're not just going to like add San Diego state or SMU for the sake of getting back to 14. That's kind of how I took it. So we kind of await as everyone is the PAC 12 media contract, which they keep saying is going to come out, but it keeps not coming out.

So we'll see what kind of effect that has in the future. All right, that is today's Locked on Jayhawks. We're going to start a series next week. Who's going to be KU's top scorers? Who's going to be their top rebounders? All those sorts of things for basketball. We'll have Nick on next week as well. We'll get to plenty more KU football content into the offseason we're uh a little over a month away from the start of the football

season which is exciting i'm derrick johnson you can find me on twitter at d johnson radio you can find the show wherever you get any of your podcasts thank you for the everydayers out there and don't forget to subscribe and like our youtube page as well see you next time