Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Football's FATE Hangs on THREE RETURNING PLAYERS | Can They DELIVER?

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Kansas Jayhawks football faces a pivotal season with quarterback Jalon Daniels at the helm. Can the dynamic signal-caller lead KU to a strong season and elevate his status as one of the Big 12's top QBs?Host Derek Johnson analyzes Daniels' impact, along with key contributors DeShawn Hanika and Calvin Clements. The discussion covers Hanika's potential to revitalize KU's tight end production and Clements' crucial development on the offensive line, as well as questions over to what version of JD6 KU will get, and the impact of all three on the success for Lance Leipold's team in 2025. Johnson also tackles the explosive growth of NIL deals and revenue sharing in college athletics, questioning the NCAA's stance on amateurism.Tune in for expert insights on the Jayhawks' path to success and the changing landscape of college sports. Will KU's returning stars propel the team to new heights in 2025?Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. Terms and conditions apply.Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE at www.monarchmoney.com/lockedoncollege for 50% off your first year.FanDuelRight now, new customers can get ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when your first FIVE DOLLAR BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.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)

On today's Locked On Jayhawks, we discuss the importance of Jalen Daniels to KU's success and three returning KU football players that are going to have a huge imprint on how this season goes for Lance Leipold and company. 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 going on? I'm Derek Johnson at D Johnson radio on Twitter. This is locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day. And thank you to every dayers catching each and every episode of the show. We are free and available anywhere you get your podcast including on our YouTube

page where you can like and subscribe to the show. We are free and available anywhere your podcast including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. Let's get that thing to 4k on the subscriber list. So please subscribe. You might be an audio only listener. Subscribe over on YouTube too. Doesn't hurt you, you know. And on today's episode, we're talking a little KU football three returning players including Jalen Daniels who are said to have a huge impact on how good Kansas winds up being in the 2025 season.

So we're going to start with Jalen Daniels. We'll move on to a couple other players that we think are going to be massively important to KU's outcome that are returning to the team. Of course, thank you that for dares who already caught the episode talking about newcomers that are gonna have such impact if you haven't already caught that one, go ahead and do that. So Jalen Daniels is the first guy that I want to talk about here. Obviously, right? He's your quarterback. He is the guy who has been, I guess, I don't know, divisive or polarizing like that's probably too strong. I think a majority of KU fans, you know, love Jaylin Daniels. But obviously, there are always especially in today's day and age, in the social media age, you can always find a hater, so to speak.

And you can find a good amount here with the I guess the controversy of Jalen Daniels from the injuries of his first couple of seasons, the Texas situation to, you know, the back stuff to then last season how it was kind of up and down with performance. But you know, I still believe in Jalen Daniels, I still believe Jalen Daniels can be one of the best quarterbacks in the conference, right. And Jalen becomes very interesting, especially because of the highs that we have seen from Jalen Daniels are as high as any quarterback that I can remember

in a Kansas uniform. But we've seen some of the lows this past season where the lows were were pretty bad where it was like, we were having discussions of, you know, do they need to give somebody else another shot? Is it the offensive coordinator? Like what's going on here? Right. And so you look at between 2021 and 2023. That's Jaylen Daniels playing those like final three games of the 2021 season. That's, you know, the games he played before the

injury and then after the injury in the 22 season. And then that's the first whatever four games he played in 2023. total it up Jaylen Daniels in those those combined seasons at 30 passing touchdowns to eight interceptions. Those are very, very good numbers, right. And if we had rushing scores to it goes to 40 total touchdowns compared to eight interceptions. That's really good numbers. Obviously, it's segmented out over different seasons. But a lot of that is due to, you know,

injury and that lowers it even more. Last season though. So again, those three seasons 40 touchdowns to eight interceptions last season, he had 12 interceptions, four more interceptions, and he had 14 touchdowns. Though something doesn't add up there, right? Like, it's not congruent, right? And even if we had the rushing touchdowns in the last year, it's 20 touchdowns, compared to 12 interceptions. That pales in comparison to the 40 to eight he had over his first three seasons. Now, the

back seven games that we saw last year from Jalen Daniels were a lot better than the first five games that we saw last year from Jalen Daniels were a lot better than the first five games that we saw. And I think part of that was KU adjusting the offense. I think part of it might have been, you know, him getting more comfortable with what the offense with what Jeff Grimes was asking him to do. But yeah, I do think the Lance Lightpole and maybe Jim Sparowsky, maybe they did, you know, add a little more flavor

to try to figure out what is going to work specifically with Jalen Daniels. And over those back seven games, he started to find his groove again. So if you add in the six rushing touchdowns he had last year, and we compare the split the first five games of the season, Jalen Daniels goes for seven total touchdowns compared to eight interceptions, he had more interceptions than he had touchdowns in the first interceptions. He had more interceptions than he had touchdowns

in the first five games of last season. But in the final seven games, he had 13 touchdowns compared to four interceptions. And those are relatively modest numbers, right? Like if you were to basically multiply that out into a 12 game season, you're looking at closer to what, 24 touchdowns and like seven or eight interceptions. Like it's not like Heisman specific numbers, but those are solid numbers,

especially for what Kansas became over the back half of the season, which was like, we're going to feed Devin Neal and let him be, you know, the workhorse to our offense that's going to take over games like the Colorado game. Right. Now, the question is, because it's funny coming into last year, the ultimate question with Jalen Daniels was just a health question. It was, is he gonna stay healthy or not? And if he's not gonna stay healthy,

is it gonna be a severe injury that causes him to miss big time? Or is it gonna be like a minor injury that maybe causes him to miss a couple of games? And now we go into this season and it almost feels like that the lost conversation. Not that it's not still there, but we saw him play a fully healthy season.

And so from that perspective, it almost lets you move past it a little more. To me, those questions still haven't been relieved. There's still a chance that he could get injured, but it was nice to see him complete a full season to make you think and know that, okay, he can do this, right? And as you get older, you learn better how to protect your body. And I'm sure he'll be good about, you know, doing those things. But that still is a question coming into this season. But the other question we have to ask now that we didn't have to ask in those previous seasons was, what are we going to get from Jalen? Are we going to get the first five games?

Are we going to get the last seven games? If you get the first five games, then it's going to be a struggle this season for KU. If you get the last seven games over the course of the season, KU is going to have a pretty successful season. Or are you going to get a replication in some way of last year, meaning it would just be inconsistent, where maybe you do have, you know, a couple bad weeks stretch. Maybe you do have a bad three week stretch at some point in the season, but then you have seven good weeks and then you have two other mad games just kind of in the middle there, right? Like what are you going to get here on that scale of what we've seen from Jalen Daniels? And I do think it is important to

again, tie this back into the idea that you had Jeff Grimes, it just never really seemed to sink in it never silly really seemed to work between the two of them. And the fact that Jim Zabrowski, who was the quarterback coach for Jalen all these years, and was the play caller for the bowl game, which obviously was Jason Bean, but in which Kansas torched UNLV with a similar cast of characters to the one that lost to UNLV. That has to help at least a certain amount, whether it's him feeling comfortable or whatever. I think it will help. I think it will help and he'll have a better idea of what Jalen's strengths are. And I think that is something that is going

to make it more likely. We see the guy over the past seven games during this season because Zabrowski is the coordinator. One of the big differences that they need to attack. One of the big things that Andy Kotelnicki did was they attacked the middle of the field, right? And they dressed up a lot of stuff, but they attacked the intermediate area of the field.

Last year, they really struggled. Kansas did. Jalen Daniels did, throwing over the middle of the field, especially in that intermediate area. And it seemed like last year, the offense, like Jeff Grimes, tried to make it more of the, hey, we're going to play perimeter flank football. We're going to throw a lot of deep balls. That just didn't work as well with the KU personnel. And so now you end up with a roster that has, I think, better yard after catch receivers on this roster. Maybe not as many contested ball receivers, maybe not as many route running technicians,

but better yard after catch receivers. That could help because you throw a quick route, and boom, your guy runs 10 yards after catch that make things a little easier for you. But also I think they'll be better at exploiting that area. This season, which I'm Zabrowski and they certainly have to. I think you make the argument whether the receiver change will hurt or help Jaylen Daniels because I think overall Skinner Arnold and

Grimmel had very good careers at Kansas. There were some key drops I think from Skinner and Arnold last season that certainly hurt KU at certain times. And I think, like I said, there are certain areas where this current receiving core is better than that receiving core. And there are certain areas where they're going to be worse. I do think if you were driving, we have to wait and see what the production is, right? But the hype behind Emmanuel Henderson could just be that he is the best receiver of this

group and having the best overall, that would certainly open things up for the rest of the team. But you know, maybe the maybe the biggest key honestly is just clutch play or putting games away and how we judge things for Jalen Daniels here. Because you know what I mean? Like if he would have finished with 20 touchdowns compared to 12 interceptions at the end of the season, but they would have closed out the West Virginia game and or they closed out the UNLV game and or the K state game or something like, uh, obviously you're not going to win every one score game. Or for the most part you're not, uh,

let's say they just grabbed two more of those one score games that they lost early in the season and they ended up seven and five and they go to a bowl game. Who knows whether they win or lose the bowl game. So you're looking at either eight and five or seven and six, but you went back to another bowl game. At that point in time, I don't know how much we'd be talking about it. You know what I mean? Like, or maybe it's just the early season woes were so apparent

and appalling that that just kind of jumped out in front of us. But if they can close games better, then I guess it doesn't really matter as much what happened over the course of it, right? Because again, if you close the game better against Illinois and UNLV in case you end up with a lot more wins than you did last season. So even though it is a discussion of what are you going to get here, as long as you're getting more from just that area, clutch time performance, that could be enough to change the pendulum of the winning pendulum, so to speak, in the right direction in a lot of big ways. So who are a couple other players that I think could have a huge impact on where Kansas stands this upcoming season? Let's get to that next. This is locked on Jayhawks. This episode of the show is brought to you by game time where you'll be able to get tickets to the first or fourth KU football game.

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Boom. Then you'll be the ultimate locked on listener here. OK, so Jalen Daniels obviously will have a big impact on how the season goes for Kansas. I think if he has, you know, a big see like if he looks like the guy he did from 2021 to 2023 consistently and he does it for a full healthy season, I think you could be seeing eight to nine wins for Kansas this season. If he looks like the guy in the first half of last season, then Kansas probably doesn't go to a

bowl game this year. If he looks like the guy from the second half of last season where it's like, okay, he's clearly better than he was the first half, but it didn't still look the same of, say 2022 or 2023 at peak. That team probably still makes a bowl game, you know, do they go over on the winds? I don't know, probably not. But six or seven wins would be my guess. So that would be kind of my range of expectations based on what would happen there. I have two more offensive players and it's interesting because you know,

the defense obviously will be key and you could pick guys like on the defensive line but or in the secondary but like there's so many newcomers whether there's transfers and like the position group that I feel best about on the defense might be defensive tackle so it's like if I pick one of the returners on defense tackle it's like well but I feel good about a lot of those guys feel good about the depth so why would I just just pick one guy? So I'm gonna go to Sean Hanukkah as a returning now, technically has never played in

an actual game for Kansas, but he is a returning joined last year had the year off from Iowa State from the betting scandal, which he was totally cleared of nothing to come from it. And so he goes to Kansas last year and it sucks because he gets hurt in spring football. He has an Achilles injury, misses all last season. Now he's back. And the last time he was on a college football field, he was playing for Iowa State. He had 17 catches, 244 yards and four touchdowns.

It's been a long time for him since he's been on a field. Again, 2022 you're talking about here. So you're talking about by the time he hits the field, you know, it'll been basically three years since he was on a football field, 2022 you're talking about here. So you're talking about by the time he hits the field, you know, it'll been basically three years since he was on a football field in a real game. And for Kansas Key on per net who joined as a transfer has now transferred out go boomerangs back to Arizona. You lose Jared Casey and Trevor Cardell the year before that you lose Mason Fairchild. You don't have a lot

of other options, right? Obviously, you bring in the tight end from rice, you've got some guys you've been cultivating along in your program, you brought on Layton Kier last year, who maybe figures to play a little bit of a role on this year's team, maybe a little more than he did last year. And with Hanukkah, like you're going to be counting on him in a real way to produce for you as a tight end, especially if Kansas does want to get back to being able to utilize the middle of the field in a real way, they're going to be counting on him in a real way to produce for you as a tight end, especially if Kansas does want to get back to being able to utilize the middle of the field in a real

way. They're going to need Hanukkah to step up in that way. Kansas didn't get a ton of production from their tight ends last season. I think a bit of it was misusage earlier on in the season. And I don't think Jeff Grimes offense was as conducive to the tight ends like Andy Kotelnicki's was. For instance, we'll see where Jim Zabrowski's is. As far as that, maybe the fact that they don't have as many, you know, go-to options at tight end, maybe they just play more of wide receiver formations on this year's team or two running back sets. We'll kind of see what ends up happening there.

But yeah, I mean, if Hanukkah can produce in a big way for Kansas, similar to what they got from Mason Fairchild a couple of years ago, that'd be a huge boon for the KU offense. It would give them a nice security blanket, would give them that over the field threat that they really need and that they were missing a little bit

to a certain extent last season. The last guy I have here is Calvin Clements. Kansas needs a big jump from Calvin Clements. And he is somebody who came in with prospect pedigree. He's got the body. He's gotten on the field early. I mean he was playing in the bowl game as a true freshman.

Everything is lined up to this point that Calvin Clements is succeeding at Kansas. There's going to be a lot of pressure on him this year to be really good. And in general, I don't just think like Calvin Clements becomes one of the most interesting players on the team, I mean, not just because he is this local kid

who is a really good prospect and could turn out to be a future NFL player for KU on the offensive line. It's also the idea that in general, Calvin Clements is kind of a representation of internal program development for KU and how the staff is going to be able to cycle guys through. I say this all the time. The best programs in the country, like, yeah, sure, maybe some of the you're going to have years where you win less games than you did the year before, you're going to have times where you lose a player and you replace them with

a player who doesn't end up being as good. But the best programs in the country find a way to replace good talent with other good talent. Again, you could be going from a first round pick to a third round pick, right? You could be going from an all big 12 second team to an all big 12 honorable mention. You could be going from an all American to just a serviceable starter.

But the best teams in the country find a way to at least find that serviceable player, a good enough player that they coach them up, they develop them, they find the right talent and those players are able to fill in. And so the best teams in the country are able to do that consistently over and over. And Calvin Clements becomes one of those guys, like a lot of the guys they've had success with over the previous years. I do think Lance Leipold and the staff get credit for helping develop them in a way that other coaching staffs at Kansas wouldn't have been able to or didn't.

But a lot of them have been, you know, less miles guys. Potentially, right? There's kind of a mix of miles and Lighthold. Clemens fully represents a full on kid for this staff to where him developing, you know, it's not the BLM, all you have to do with multiple guys, but he would very much be a success story in that regard of like, they developed this kid, they lost good talent at left tackle

back to back seasons of having basically NFL players at left tackle for I guess, really, if you want to say three, if you want to go back, but of having NFL talent left tackle, and they developed one internally from a local kid and turned him into a good starter. Like, I mean, that that that's a program win, if you can do that, that is a program defining moment in terms of this is what we are about, this is what we're going to do. So it is bigger than Calvin Clements in a lot of way. And I

don't mean to like put pressure on the kid or anything, because it's, you know, he just needs to be him. He just needs to play his game. But you look at it. So 20, 23, 83 snaps, again, very limited. He's playing as a true freshman, but that's difficult on its own as a true freshman on the offensive line at any level of the D1 football, let alone in the big 12.

He had a 58 PFF grade, 42 in pass blocks, 61 in run block. Then a bit of a bigger sample size last year, 169 snaps. He has a 61.4 PFF grade. That's as a redshirt freshman. And again, 60 basically puts you in the range of just being like an average starter. If you're an average starter as a redshirt freshman at left tackle or just at tackle in general in the big 12,

that's pretty darn good. 73 pass block grade two. So there is an opportunity for him to make a big jump. But that becomes the question. Is he going to be like, for instance, if you're looking at PFF grade is just a measure, is he going to be a player who's a 65 PFF grade this year, which that would be a solid starter. And that would probably still be a success, right? For a guy who would be in his first year starting as a

redshirt sophomore, that would still be a good thing for KU. Or is he going to take like a, a legit jump up where it's like, oh, this dude looks like an NFL draft pick, you know what I mean? And he's an all big 12 player right away. And the other part of this too, is that like I said, it's the fact that Kansas has set the bar so high these past couple years with offensive tackles. Last year, you had, you know, Logan Brown and Bryce Cable do on tackles like cable do ends up

getting drafted in the NFL. Logan Brown had an 82.5 PFF grade last year. 2023 Dom Pune, who ends up being a year one starter for the 49ers on the offensive line. He had an 80.6 PFF grade. Those are big shoes to fill at the tackle position for Kansas. And you could go back to 2022. I mentioned, you know, Earl Bostic.

He is a player who's having I guess a cup of coffee here in the NFL. I lost a shot with the Cowboys. He had a 60 pff grade in 2022. So he was just a fine solid starter there who, you know, had some warts. But that offense was still really good. And what I find interesting there with that one, though, is that they had Mike Novitski. And that was is that they had Mike Novitski. And that was, I think, the following season,

Novitski had a not as good season because he was plain injured. But that, I think, was Novitski's best season at Kansas. Michael Ford, Bryce Cabledo, Dominic Pooni around him. So they had really good insulation. And then you basically just needed a solid left tackle, which they were able to get with Earl Bostic. That is the one thing that makes it harder

on Calvin Clements here, is that if you get Earl Bostic level production out of Clements, I don't know that they have, like Bryce Foster is really good and Kobe Baines is a solid guard for KU. But right now you do have a little bit of question. Is Enrique Cruz and Tabaki Tuiko Lovato or one of these other guys like Nolan Gorrchika or James Livingston or something,

are they gonna be enough to kind of fill in around it that if Clements does end up just having an average season, which again would be a good result overall for KU for a redshirt sophomore playing left tackle, but are they going to have enough on the offensive line to overcome after the past couple of seasons, you've had special left tackle play, to say the least. All right. Let's continue on here with a little more on college athletics, the NIL game rev

share some interesting numbers coming out. This is locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for joining us on this episode of locked on Jayhawks. Again, you can check out locked on college football or locked on college basketball for your second listen every day. I wanted to make quick mention of this one. Gary Woodland was named a US vice captain for the 2025 Ryder Cup. So he's going to get to help, I guess, pick the team.

Or I don't know what the vice captain does necessarily. But really cool. The oliver Jayhawk over there and really cool story of what Gary's been through. If you haven't checked out, there's a full swing episode, which is on Netflix that kind of details Gary's story in a real way. And that's just a good show in general. So that's cool.

So this came from Ross Dellinger last week. It was OpenDorse released its annual NIL report. And it mentioned that this June, so last month, NIL collectives paid athletes 824% more than they did the previous June. And you start to wonder what is going on. Is the market bumping up that big? Like, why would that happen? Think about it. Before this clearinghouse settlement comes in, before you have this company that is basically going to be the third party judging these NIL deals. Is that a fair deal? Is that fair market value? Is that what this player should be making? Or should they be making less than that?

These schools were trying to fit in these NIL deals before that happened to basically be like, hey, we can overpay you now. And then we're not going to be able to overpay you. And I'm sure a lot of that was coming from the players and the agent side to be like, hey, we want to get paid now because we know we have the opportunity to make more money now. So you end up with that number that I bet you if you go to June of next year, it's going to sink so much even if you compare it to just where it was, you know, two years ago. This was also shared to athletes

are projected to get 2.75 billion this year in rev share plus nil. And this is where the whole idea the NCAA continues to cling to this student athlete thing. And the problem with that is that is what is kind of preventing like, you might be talking to somebody about the transfer portal. And you know, I've had plenty of water cooler discussions where you're talking about the transfer portal and oh, I don've had plenty of water cooler discussions where you're talking about the transfer portal and oh, I don't like this and you know, this this and that. I wish they could have contracts or

the problem is you cannot have contracts unless this was basically, you know, you can't under the guise of having student athletes, you're basically preventing the student athletes from forming a players union. And without the players union, you can't have a collectively bargained agreement that would allow you to have contracts. And yet you see this number where 2.75 billion in rev share plus nil. This is professional sports. If

you want to call minor league sports, that's fine. Certainly would want to call it minor league sports, that's fine. Certainly would be the highest paying minor league sports. That's for sure. So you look at that, you look at those numbers. And to me, it just is this idea that the NCAA needs to get rid of this farce. You have opened the can of worms. I think I was a proponent of NIL under the guise

that I really thought it was going to be this opportunity for players to, okay, you know, you can make money off your name, maybe you like the air. Like I remember there was like a punter, a kicker at UCF who got like he got threatened to be he would like be ineligible for the full season because he had a YouTube channel where he was like he played guitar. He was some sort of musician and the YouTube channel had nothing to do with the fact that he was a kicker punter. But the NCAA under their dumb rules were like, Oh, but you could hypothetically be using your, you know, name, image, likeness, your popularity, your notoriety as an athlete, to boost up the other things that you do, even

though it was like a kicker punter at UCF. It's like, nobody's gonna know what this guy is is right. And those were areas where like, I was okay, great. And like, you know, if a player, there was nothing stopping me as a student from you know, getting paid. So what should stop one of those players if a business wants to sponsor them? Instead, what we have wound up with is just donors basically outbidding each other to take on the talent. Maybe that was so predictable from the start. But

if you do want that, and now that this whole can of worms has opened up, if you do believe that, okay, the best way to move forward is to find some way to, you know, have kids sign contracts where you know, they sign a two or three year contract, maybe there's a team option, a player option, a mutual option. At the end of it, maybe it is a four year contract. Maybe there's buyouts in the contract where if you do want to leave, you have to pay a buyout to the school or

the other school bringing you on has to pay a buyout to that school, right? There are certain ways you can do it. But none of that can happen without the NCAA giving up that that kind of student athlete thing and allowing for, you know, player unions and some collectively bargained sort of thing because again, $3 billion essentially, if we round up this year in rev share and NiHL for these players, that is absolutely bonkers. All right, that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks.

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