Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - JALON DANIELS IS BACK FOR 2025: Why it was a Must for Kansas Jayhawks and Lance Leipold

Starting point is 00:00:01 More breaking news on this bonus Locked on Jayhawks, Jalen Daniels is back for 2025. One final season why it was a must if Kansas wants to make a bowl game in 2025. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What's up? Derek Johnson at T. Johnson Radio on Twitter, at Derek Johnson on Blue Sky. This is Locked On Jayhawks.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Thanks for making it your first listen every day. Thank you to the everydayers catching each and every show, catching all of our bonus episodes. We already had one out about Jeff Grimes, possibly going to Wisconsin, candidates for KU with the offensive coordinator. We had a KU Missouri preview. Plenty of content coming out.

Starting point is 00:00:48 We are free and available anywhere you get your podcasts as well as on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. On this bonus episode of Locked on Jayhawks, we're talking about the latest breaking news. Jalen Daniels, JD6, QB1, whatever you want to call him. He's back for one final ride at Kansas. This will be, what, his sixth year at KU? 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, yeah, six years of college ball for Jalen Daniels. He'll have one final ride. This is because he had the redshirt season,

Starting point is 00:01:16 and he also had the COVID season that he's able to use those extra years of play. I'm going to tell you why I think this is a must if KU wants to make a bowl game in the 2025 season. We'll talk about the QB room for this upcoming year and beyond, and we'll also get a little bit into Jalen Daniels' legacy because I think it's a very interesting conversation on this bonus episode of the show. Let's start right here with Jalen Daniels.

Starting point is 00:01:40 Pete Thamel reported that he is going to be returning for another season and the wording of it, and this isn't the first player I've seen this worded this way in the breaking news that, you know, they're coming back. It was worded in a way, Brennan Sworsby for Cincinnati, that he's agreed to come back on a new deal. Now, what's lost in that part of this is the new deal. Does that mean he's making more than he was the season before to return back? Does it mean that they negotiated a deal that was close to what he was making because he didn't have as good of a season as maybe some of the

Starting point is 00:02:08 previous seasons in terms of the the per capita numbers uh like what what does that necessarily mean i don't know but that's something you're just gonna have to get used to nowadays of like instead of players announcing uh oh i'm not going to the nfl draft or i'm coming back for another year like i am entering the transfer portal It's going to become more commonplace. Like I've decided to return on a new deal with my team. Like that's just going to be more commonplace as odd as it sounds. So I was actually preparing for early next week, a episode about why Kansas needs to get Jalen Daniels back for another season.

Starting point is 00:02:38 And, you know, it's funny because in previous seasons, the, the knock, I guess you could say against J Jalen Daniels was could he stay healthy? Could he stay healthy through a full season? You felt like the level of play was there. And this year, it became kind of opposite. Jalen made it through the whole season. It wasn't really a conversation about his health for this season, which was great, but it was the level of play, specifically in the first half, certain people calling for him to be benched i mean we had episodes on the show talking about should he be you know should they go with cole ballard or isaiah marshall should they change the offensive coordinator and see what's happening we kind of settled on you know they should change the play calling and see how

Starting point is 00:03:16 that goes but you know we we were certainly talking about it here because uh through the first portion of the season he had what four touchdowns and seven interceptions like it was a real conversation at that point in time but then the second half of the season started and jaylen was really good and so that just becomes the question coming into this year especially now if you're going to have a new offensive coordinator check out that episode thank you if you already did um is there going to be more learning process because was that part of the reason he had a slow start to the year was he shaking off the rust what was it exactly then again if you're going to be hiring from within say jim zaprowski maybe you don't have that learning curve but in august and september combined jaylen daniels had

Starting point is 00:03:53 six total touchdowns between passing and rushing he had seven interceptions that wasn't getting it done but after that point he was the guy we were used to seeing, albeit in limited time, in 2022 and 2023. October and November of this season, Jalen Daniels had 13 total touchdowns and four interceptions. That's over seven games. Now, you put that out to a 12-game pace, that'd be equivalent to about 22 touchdowns and seven interceptions. So those are good numbers, to be clear. The touchdowns are a little modest, but then when you take into account that, okay, Devin Neal is getting a lot of these touchdowns, deservedly so, right?

Starting point is 00:04:28 You look into next year, and Devin Neal is no longer here. He is now the ultimate alpha on the team, being the sixth-year player, being the quarterback one. You know, you could probably assume he's getting more of those opportunities to score touchdowns. So that back half of the season was really good for Jalen. And even in games where it was about Devin Neal, like you think the game you know that was Devin Neal's game but Jalen Daniels was still excellent in that football game and like with Jalen specifically um it was more about like in the games where where Devin Neal was going off okay there still aren't going to be times where it's third and long there still are going to be times where you need to convert third down or you

Starting point is 00:05:02 need to have a big pass play and he was pretty money on those and you look at the total qbr numbers right through the first portion of the season 48.5 30.8 54.9 40.7 38.6 that was the tcu game from then on he was nails 81.7 against arizona state 96.7 against houston 69.7 against k-State 95.5 against Iowa State uh 65.1 at BYU 92.7 in the Colorado game the Baylor game uh wasn't great 48.8 but you know that was just kind of a whole disaster from everywhere for KU in that one and the full body of work even with the first five games being a struggle for Jalen and just the offense as a whole getting acclimated to Jeff Grimes and KU trying to figure stuff out even with that that slow start where you could basically say it was like it was I don't know um giving you a false start or allowing the others to start in front of you he still wound up with a 68.7 total QBR

Starting point is 00:06:00 which was eighth in the big 12 I know that doesn't sound great but in a season where you had as bad of a start as you did to where that's going to i guess tank some of the numbers put a weight and on some of the numbers put an anchor on some of the numbers to finish still in the middle pack of the big 12 which was one point behind avery johnson at k-state and rocco beck who's playing for a big 12 title. And it was higher than Garrett green, Noah Fafita, Jake Retzlaff at BYU. So like if that was a down season, because you had a bad first five games, that's still wildly impressive because think about this from the Kansas football perspective, the Kansas football history perspective, we're not that far away from having complete opposite of that quarterback play. Now, total QBR, that number that I just kind of went over there real briefly, that's a number on ESPN that goes back to 2004 from the numbers that they have. It's basically

Starting point is 00:06:50 on a scale of zero to 100. It takes into account how you did on third downs and did you convert and all these different things. Well, when you look at the all-time list, obviously, there are certain years with Jason Bean and Jalen Daniels recently where they maybe didn't play enough games to qualify for it. But if I added those seasons of what they did put up QBR wise to qualify here is the list of the best individual seasons by QBR for KU quarterbacks 2022 Jalen Daniels is the top number in 90 2022 Jason Bean is second 2023 Jalen Daniels is third 2023 Jason Bean is fourth 2021 Jalen Daniels is fifth then you have 2008 Todd Riesing is sixth 2024 Jalen Daniels is seventh and then 2007 Todd Riesing is eighth now I don't know that I buy the 2007 Todd Riesing the Orange Bowl season only being eight that

Starting point is 00:07:38 should probably be higher but the fact that you got a again um slow start for jalen daniels that finished strong that still wound up in qbr in the range of some todd reese in seasons shows you that this guy still has it and he looked like the guy we're used to it's not just about the stats some of the throws he was making over the back half of the season showed he was still the guy that we were used to once he got more comfortable shaking the rust off uh once he got more comfortable with the offense he was good and for a team that's losing a lot this season having a veteran quarterback is going to help and so i don't really see an ab i mean there's a way that kansas makes a bowl game next season by just a bunch of people breaking out by you hitting the transfer portal if you would have lost jaylen daniels and bringing in a good quarterback or something like that the easiest the quickest avenue to getting back to a bowl

Starting point is 00:08:28 game next season which I think would be a success for a lot of KU fans considering how much you're losing um is Jalen Daniels coming back he will know the offense and yes you could say there might have a new offense coordinator but again if it's Jim Zabrowski it's going to be familiar if it's Matt Lubick it's still going to be familiar from previous seasons, right? He makes that easier. And you could say, oh, what about Isaiah Marshall and Cole Ballard and David McCollum coming in? Okay. David McCollum is going to be a true freshman. Like it takes time at the quarterback position. Isaiah Marshall took a red shirt last year. You know, it seems like by all accounts that like, I think Isaiah Marshall is going to be a good player, but it's going to take some time for him to get ready, that he's not quite ready yet. Like Jalen Daniels this year is going to be

Starting point is 00:09:07 better than what you get from Isaiah Marshall. And so if you're viewing it from the standpoint of if Jalen Daniels would have left, I think they probably would have gone out and brought in a transfer portal quarterback. And what are the chances that that guy would be just as good as Jalen Daniels? I don't think it would be very good. And then you add to the fact that he is the leader of the team, that he'll probably help keep things together, that he'll probably help you bring in other recruits. Kansas needs more receivers in the portal, obviously. If you're a portal receiver right now and you see, oh, this quarterback's coming back, he knows the system, he's a six-year quarterback, now I'm more interested in going there. Now, at the end of the day, a lot of times in recruiting nowadays, it's just coming down to the money, the bottom dollar. But let's say you have the same amount of money that you're offering that another school's offering, and now the receiver just has to pick based on everything else, right? Maybe that's the difference of you being able to go out and get those as opposed to having an unproven position where maybe if you're a receiver looking in the transfer portal and

Starting point is 00:10:01 you're going, yeah, I don't know if I want to go there, like they don't know who their quarterback's going to be, right? That makes it a little bit easier for lance leipold and company i would imagine with some of this stuff so i think the the best way because i also think he's just a really good player and i think we saw that over the back half of the season for kansas to make a bowl game this next season even with all these new players is for jaylen nanos to be back at quarterback. And that was obviously a huge gift for Lance Leipold and company to have back. And man,

Starting point is 00:10:27 what a, what a night it's turned into. It felt like there was really dark news. We had an episode is, is it getting close to panic time? DJ Warner leaves. Then you have Saman Morrison leaving, but good vibes now.

Starting point is 00:10:38 Very good vibes. All right, let's talk about the quarterback room for 2025 and beyond as well as Jalen Daniels legacy. This is locked on Jay ox. Our episode is brought to you by GameTime, which is a new feature called GameTime Picks. It makes

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Starting point is 00:11:48 sunday find our ku missouri preview to get you ready for the jayhawks uh basketball team playing on sunday all right what does the quarterback room look like now for 2025 well you have uh what five scholarship players in the quarterback room for this upcoming season you have really six quarterbacks in the quarterback room um i would season you have really six quarterbacks in the quarterback room um i would imagine now you don't do it like at this point you're good now does this have an impact if if you are isaiah marshall do you sit here and say oh you know i was expecting to be competing for the starting job this year now i'm gonna leave now i'm gonna transfer away i don't think that entirely happens i mean he he still knows like Jalen only has one more year. And if the idea is that Isaiah Marshall is going to take another year could transfer of course but i i don't think

Starting point is 00:12:45 you can be held hostage to that idea uh when you have an opportunity to bring back a player like jaylen daniels and the the beauty of you bringing in david mccomb as well this year and then having a commit for 2026 and jaylen mason all guys who are expected to be you know solid players as well there's a chance i mean between mean, between McCall, Marshall, and Mason, if all works out, probably only one of those guys is going to end up being the starter because they're going to become the starting guy. And then they're going to be good enough to keep that job if all works out. And then the other guys are going to be like, oh, I'm not going to play because he's only one year older than me or two years older than me or one year younger than me,

Starting point is 00:13:20 whoever it ends up being. And then I'm going to transfer anyway. So I think you're totally fine there. Obviously, you do want to keep everyone and cultivate that that competition and find the best guy that way but uh yeah you're looking at it now jaylen daniels is your starter the backup competition should be uh pretty good this year cole ballard isaiah marshall as a redshirt freshman ballard is a redshirt sophomore david mccomb is a true freshman sounds like he's going to be enrolling early so that should help him i I know Marshall did that last year, too. And then you have Ben Easter's, who will be a, I think, fifth or sixth year senior. And then Mikey Pauly, who is a redshirt junior, and he is a technically walk-on for the QB

Starting point is 00:13:55 room. So I think you feel good about the quarterback room. I think if you were comparing it to last year coming into the offseason, like, it's weird because Jalen Innes had such big hype for if he could stay healthy that it's like if you're comparing to what the hype was of could he be a heisman candidate i i don't know like is the quarterback room better than that one but if you're comparing it to where we finished the season i mean assuming these guys all stay together and come together it's it's uh an awesome qb room uh for next season then when you're talking about the future you're talking about jalen is gone this is his final season after 2025 and then that's where

Starting point is 00:14:31 this year that backup quarterback battle is going to tell us a lot because we saw this season in the two deep the early portion of the year is ballard's backup was that because ballard was ahead of marshall or was that because they wanted to preserve Isaiah Marshall's redshirt or was it a little bit of both right where maybe they even and they were just like okay we'll just go with Ballard's backup just in case and that way we can preserve Isaiah Marshall's redshirt this year is going to be very interesting to see who wins that backup job right who ends up being the second quarterback on the 2d because in theory then you view going into that next offseason that guy has the leg up for being qb1 the following season

Starting point is 00:15:05 and then you look at it and your starting quarterback would either be a redshirt junior cole ballard in 2026 a redshirt sophomore isaiah marshall or probably a redshirt freshman in david mccolver i guess even a true freshman uh in the the kid from wichita so um i i think that you're feeling good about where you are this delays the process another year to where you have another year to kind of groom both of those young quarterbacks with Marshall and McCollum and set you up that you can, even with a lot of transition of pieces this year, you can still win games this year because the quarterback is the ultimate position, the most important position, and it's going to make it more appealing

Starting point is 00:15:43 for transfer portal players. And therefore, if you're coming off a bowl season, then you're going to be set up better for those young quarterbacks come 2026 for them to succeed when they get thrown into the fire too. All right, let's finish up here. Jalen Daniels' legacy. I think it's a very interesting conversation, and he is high up there in a lot of career statistics. We're going to discuss that next on Locked on Jayhawks.

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Starting point is 00:16:43 an official sportsbook partner of the NFL and the Locked On Podcast Network. It's been a busy night. No more breaking news tonight, please. We'll get to it when we get to it. Okay, so Jalen Daniels back. What is his legacy? Well, let me start with this. Through all the crap, Jalen Daniels has stood firm.

Starting point is 00:17:02 And I mean crap in a lot of different ways, right? There was the crap of having to deal with his very first season at KU, a cardboard cutout offensive line in 2020 when he was a 17-year-old. He deals with that. I guess deals with the guy who recruited him, Brent Dierman, then leaving. He deals with the less miles staff getting fired he deals with emma jones being the interim head coach and then you know eventually leaving um he deals with um i guess not being the starter in the start of the 2021 season

Starting point is 00:17:40 sticks through it jason bean eventually gets injured he comes in and and you know has to play the k-state game and then the next three games to finish out the season plays really well he then has to deal with the injury stuff in 2022 he then comes back finishes the season strong in the bowl game then he has to deal with more injury stuff in 2023 uh of which the injury stuff was more like cryptic and behind the scenes and you know it wasn't as visible to us as the hit he took against tcu in 2022 had to deal with a lot of people whether it was ku fans or i think you know you know from from the other side of things that were uh purty that's not a word you know what word i'm gonna that were basically uh shoveling ideas or shoveling fuel to the fire on rumors that were never really a thing that were not there he He had to deal with all of that.

Starting point is 00:18:26 Then into this year, he had to deal with a new offensive coordinator. He had to deal with struggling early in the season. He had to deal with overcoming struggling. He had to deal with the noise from the outside, from people like me, from fans, from people, and he powered through it. And I have so much respect for Jaylen daniels in what he has done and what he and sticking with it at ku i mean he could have gone to a lot of other schools this year last year wherever gotten a good payday could have gone back home to california

Starting point is 00:18:56 so much respect for a man and i think he really embodies um what kansas is looking for in a student athlete and i think that's really cool and now he's got a chance to help kickstart this restart for KU. I don't call it a rebuild because now that you have Jalen Daniels back, this isn't a rebuild. You're going to try to win next season. And I think, you know, as much as Kansas is losing a lot of these players, we see it nowadays in the transfer portal. Teams build.

Starting point is 00:19:20 Like, look at Indiana this year, right? Look at that Michigan State team. What was that, like four years ago with Kenneth Walker? Like, teams can build a pop-up season in the transfer portal and then i also look at the big 12 you might see the helmets over my shoulder byu we're what five and seven four and eight last season now they're they're they're a double digit win team you know what i mean like the big 12 is crazy so like as much as kansas is gonna have all this overturn would it be that wild if they went seven and five next season eight and four no it wouldn't would it be wild if they were five

Starting point is 00:19:49 and seven also no it also wouldn't like that's gonna be the nature of the beast in the big 12 but i guess point being like this is not a rebuild it is you are rebuilding certain positions in a certain way but you can find win now talent in the trade for portal and this is more of just a restart with different faces for ku and that's how you have to approach it and so um you look at this too so i mean you have all that side of it with the legacy for jaylen but you also look at the career numbers so jaylen annuals is second currently in career passing yards 6751 yards now at the end of the day like we're going to look back at some of these numbers of the guys who were around for five and Jalen's case six years. And there might be a little asterisk to it of like, okay, but he accomplished that. And this guy only had, you know, back in the day,

Starting point is 00:20:32 three years or this guy had four years for Jalen though. I don't think that applies as much because think about it. He had a shortened season in 2020 that he wasn't always the starter 2021. He only played like three and a half games. 2022, he played what played like three and a half games 2022 he played what like eight and a half games 2023 he played three games so you could basically combine 2020 and 2021 that would be one full season you can combine 2022 and 2023 that would be a full season then you're in full season 24 so this realistically is just like his fourth full season of games it's actually uh like it's not one where you have to be like yeah but that guy just played way longer not really the case so he's second in passing yards he's not going to pass Todd Reese and he

Starting point is 00:21:08 would need almost he would need like 4,500 passing yards I that's a lot that's a lot with the offense that Kansas wants to run to begin with but he's already on there for you know he has a second in career passing yards he has the most passing yards in a single game for KU already like that was back in the Liberty Bowl he uh for career passing touchdowns is second with 45 again probably not going to pass Reising who's at 90 um for um rushing yards for a quarterback like he is somebody who is going to have a chance to crack some of those lists with certainly some really good KU former quarterbacks. He's going to have a chance to finish in a lot of ways. And is he going to have some of the individual single seasons?

Starting point is 00:21:56 I mean, if you're looking at single season passing touchdowns, he's tied fifth on the list with a season of having 18. He's tied 10th on the list with a season of having 14. Can you get another one on there, right? If he can have a season where he has like 25 touchdowns and he has 700 rushing yards, 600 rushing yards, I don't know, 2,500, 3,000 passing yards, somewhere in there, he's going to be in a great position legacy-wise, especially if the team makes it back to a bowl game

Starting point is 00:22:22 or has some good wins. And I think if he would have left after this season i don't know if he would have ended up in the ring of honor like i think we would have looked back on it and been like yeah he was he was a really productive player he had a couple great seasons you know yada yada yada but i don't know if he would have ended up in the ring of honor even despite him being you know high up there in some of those numbers i think now that he's back if he has the season that you're going to expect him to have as a final year senior that if you take the last seven games of this season and extrapolate that out you know that type of season for ku this year i think it's

Starting point is 00:22:56 a slam dunk that he ends up in the ring of honor and that's pretty cool going back to what we just talked about at the beginning of this segment all the crap that he's kind of stood through. So lots of respect for Jalen Daniels and looking forward to one final ride in 2025 for JD6. That'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcasts, including on our YouTube page. See you next time with Locked on Jayhawks.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - JALON DANIELS IS BACK FOR 2025: Why it was a Must for Kansas Jayhawks and Lance Leipold

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