Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Football Adds Talented Edge Rusher Deshawn Warner to Unprecedented Class of 2024

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Lance Leipold and the Kansas Jayhawks Football team bolstered their already strong and unprecedented class of 2024 with a commitment from defensive end/edge rusher Deshawn Warner. Warner completes the Desert Edge High School three with him, Aundre Gibson and Jonathan Kamara. What Warner brings to the table, how he impacts the future of KU's defensive line group, and overall thoughts on the class of 2024 that measures favorably to any other Kansas class since 2010.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! FanDuel Make 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

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, Deshaun Warner is a Kansas Jayhawk, or at least committed to be for Kansas. He's the first D lineman of the club at 24. Now that he's in tow for KU on this edition of Locked on Jayhawks. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. You can hear me as well, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk.

Thanks for making Locked On Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. You can also find us, like and subscribe to the show on our YouTube page with Locked On Jayhawks. On today's edition of the show, we're talking to Sean Warner. He is a three-star commit for KU football,

highly ranking defensive lineman. What it means for KU, what they're getting into Sean Warner, what it means for the D-line group, and the overall class of 2024 thoughts now as it continues to come together and honestly get close to being at this point for KU. First, though, is brought to you by the official sportsbook of Locked On. Make every moment more.

Visit fanduel.com slash locked on to get started today. Okay, so we're going to start with Deshaun Warner committing to KU. He is their first defensive lineman in the class of 2024. Who is Deshaun Warner? He is a 6'4", 225-pound edge, which in Kansas' 4, three system means he'll be playing defensive end. Um, the, the schools that he picked Kansas over very, very good. And, uh, specifically the schools that were finalists for him that he ended up picking KU on his, um,

live video was Texas, Oregon State, and Washington. And that was on Saturday when he made his decision known. There was some, I don't know, it seemed like going into decision day that it was Kansas and Washington were like the two favorites, which, I mean, that is a heck of a win over all those schools that we just mentioned. But if you just think about it from the Washington perspective, Washington has put a ton of guys into the NFL over the last I don't know really ever since

Chris Peterson took over and then obviously they've had uh that's then um but so what that puts you over the last like seven eight years something like that they put a ton of defensive guys into the NFL for you to land this kid is is a very, very big deal. He's ranked as the top 50 edge rusher on both the 24, seven sports rankings and the 24, seven sports composite rankings. And he comes in at number 673 nationally. So another top thousand recruit coming into KU. Um, and when you look at where he slots among all of KU's commits so far, he's the 14th commit. He is the fifth best recruit in the class, but he's not that far off from being even higher up there in those rankings. In terms of edge slash defensive end recruits,

if you're looking to how good of a recruit is this for KU in terms of historically, like what they've been able to reel in. If you go back and you look at a 24-7 sports composite rankings and the all-time commits for KU and you get rid of the Juco guys, right? Gets rid of the guys like Markel Combs, for instance. So just in terms of edge slash defensive end players from the high school level. Warner is the second best to ever commit to KU since 2010 per the 24-7 sports composite. So you're not typically getting in edges who are this good from a KU perspective, but that's what this staff,

that's what this team is doing and building, that they've been different and unorthodox from past staffs. Not only do you feel like you have the development and all that stuff and the game planning and the consistency of a coaching staff like Lance Eipold, they're recruiting better than other levels that we've seen Kansas be able to do. That was the thing with David Beatty. It was like, oh, but he'll be a good recruiter. That was the thing with Les Miles.

It was like, I don't know where this is all going to go or is it too old school from an offensive perspective and game planning perspective but should be able to recruit the staff will land it's light bulb the better other stuff the game management the x's and o's that all that stuff you're also getting better recruiting at this point in time um but for what it's worth if you are wondering because i said he is the number two ever high school commit who plays defensive end slash edge to commit to ku per those rankings who is number one you might be asking well the answer is stephen parker which that didn't totally work out at kansas um maybe it would have worked out if you would have stayed for this past year or maybe it would have worked out for this upcoming season if you would have stuck around he ended up going to incarnate word who uh was a semi-finalist

in the fcs playoffs last year and he had a really good season for them now that's obviously at a lower level maybe it just was never going to work with stephen parker but that was a very big deal when you got him and yeah not every four-star kid is going to work out and sometimes there are going to be kids who don't have a star ranking at all that are going to work out right there they're good stories and bad star stories from all sides but if you continue to recruit this high of ranked players, yeah, not all of them are going to work out, but more often than they're not. And you feel good about this commitment with Deshaun Warner.

He completes the Desert Edge 3, which that's Desert Edge High School in Arizona. He's actually the fourth commit from the state of Arizona. Carter Lavruski does not play at Desert Edge, but he is from Arizona. He's an offensive lineman. But now you have Jonathan Kamara, who's going to be kind of that. I mean,

mostly what you're hearing him profiled into is that Hawk position of the future where Craig Young is playing for KU Andre Gibson, who's a corner. And now you bring in Deshaun Warner, who's a defense fan. So it's kind of funny that not only are you bringing in these three kids from this good high school in Arizona, but literally you're getting three different levels. You're going to defense alignment, linebacker and DB. You're getting all three levels of your defense kind of covered from those three guys, which is a very big deal.

And the more you can establish pipelines in certain states, the better that is. Right. So that's never a bad thing, especially with how much talent all three of those kids do have uh again once more hat tip to uh you know jordan peterson as the primary recruiter the ku defensive back coach and what he's been able to do on the recruiting trail is absolutely remarkable him and chris simpson have really uh led to a lot of this you do get credit though taiwo onatolu was a secondary recruiter here and obviously ku does have you know, the whole staff is filling in at certain points, whether it's an offense coordinator, defense coordinator coming by in the visit, or Lance Leipold. Like, there are more guys than just those primary recruiters to, you know,

give praise to for these recruits. But Jordan Peterson keeps popping up on a lot of these names. He's been one of the best recruiting assistant coaches so far in the conference, and he's been one of the best recruiting assistant coaches so far in the conference and he's been very darn and uh you give credit to what he's been able to do on the recruiting trail and kind of establish that pipeline so far right now in uh arizona now as far as the scouting report for what deshaun warner is bringing to the table obviously six four 225 pounds you're going to be looking to add weight to them but you know what high school kid aren't you looking to add weight to when they're coming in um Lonnie Phelps played at like 245 he also was maybe closer being like 6263 so with Warner maybe you can get him up to like

250 something like that clearly at the very least 15 20 pounds if you can do that you've got a really strong potential for him to be a real big impact player. He's known as being a good athlete off the edge. There was a video that Kevin Flaherty of 24-7 Sports tweeted out showing kind of his first step in ability to rush the passer, like very good twitchy athlete. Michael Swain of Fog.net actually gave out a comparison, and the comparison that he gave out was Dorrance Armstrong,

which Dorrance Armstrong ended up being a preseason Big 12 player of the year, had a couple of really impactful seasons at Kansas, ended up being an NFL draft pick, and has had a solid NFL career with the Dallas Cowboys so far. If you're saying Deshaun Warner is going to end up being Dorrance Armstrong, you take that and you run to the bank because boy would that be full for KU. So a very possibly good contract being made. Alright, we're going to get on to what it

means for the defensive line, what it means for the edge position group, what it means for the class of 2024 as they continue to recruit it. We're also going to get to overall thoughts on the class of 2024 as they continue to recruit it um we're also going to get to overall thoughts on the class of 2024 or here in just first though this episode show is brought to you by fan duel sportbook take your first swing at betting mlb on fan duel and get 10 times your first bet amount in bonus bets, $200. That's right. Just bet 20 bucks and you'll land $200 in bonus bets, win or lose. That's 200.

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slash locked on to get up to $200 in bonus bets. That's FanDuel.com slash locked on FanDuel, an official partner of Major League Baseball. All right. Of the KU defense and the edge position. As far as the class, Deshaun Warner is now one of your 14 commits for the class. I do think the KU is flexible in all this. Like they have certain allotments of this,

how many scholarships we want for this position in that position. But if a good enough player via transfer or school wants to come, you're not going to say no. So they are flexible in the same way of the high school numbers. There's a certain number that they're probably comfortable with so that they can be like, well, if, if we bring in, you know, say 15 high school commits, we can bring in 10 transfer portal players. And that that's a number we're comfortable with. But again, if, if you're at 15, a high school player who you really like is like, Hey, I want to commit. You're not going to be like, ah, sorry, we already have 15 commits. We can't

take it. No, they'll just be flexible and they'll take one less transfer guy. So there isn't a flexibility here, but, um, in talking with Michael Sw'll take one less transfer guy. So there isn't a flexibility here, but I'm in talking with Michael Swain again, a fog.net on, on rock chalk sports talk last week, he was talking about how he thinks like 16 could be the number they take in, in high school, somewhere around there.

So if we figure somewhere between 15 to 17, that means that there's not a ton left. That means that they can be a little bit more choosy. That means that they have more time during the season to focus on other things like game planning like looking into the transfer portal like recruiting the class of 2025 and then just focusing on continuing to recruit the commits that you have as opposed to you know more thin that's very important to have this done earlier on and now you're at a point where you only are going to need one or two or three more kids as part of the high school class uh like every position is checked off though when you look at who they've added in you're bringing in a

quarterback with isaiah marshall you have two running backs in tow you have a tight end you have three offensive linemen a couple of linebackers including one that plays the hawk you have four defensive backs and now you have an edge but you could use even more uh defense alignment now if you notice there i didn't mention receiver but they just brought in three receivers in in the class of 2023 and i think the only receiver who has to graduate at the end of the year is kevin terry now who knows if you lose any players via the transfer portal or going early to pro or you know maybe they do graduate and they're just ready to move on you don't know that but you feel like you're pretty good receiver unless there's a good enough player that makes you want to take one of those exceptions nick marsh right okay so that

makes sense but you definitely need more defensive line you could probably use another edge you could probably use like an interior guy even maybe maybe not um so at the very least the way you look at it okay maybe ku is only going to bring in two more high school commits maybe both are on the defensive line maybe they're only going to bring in one more right um and then they can fill the rest with transfer portal pickups so as big of a get as this is with deshaun warner being a really good player somebody who profiles into being possibly a really elite player for you there's still work to be done on the defensive line. Even after this, this isn't one of those, it's like, all right, check that off the list. Now they're completely

done. That's basically the one position still that they need more, but this is a great start to have. And that becomes even more important because, you know, you look at this season. So at the end of this year, at the end of the 2023 football season for KU, Patrick Joyner will have graduated. Hayden Hatcher will have graduated. And both those guys are in competition to be one of the starters. You think Jeremy Robinson's going to start at one?

Those could be the top two candidates to start at the other. Maybe, maybe not. At the very least, both of those are going to be rotation players if they're both healthy. Devin Phillips, who's your transfer you brought in from Colorado State? He's going to graduate at the end of both healthy. Devin Phillips, who's your transfer you brought in from Colorado State?

He's going to graduate at the end of the year. Ron McGee, who's kind of a depth piece of deteriorator, he's going to graduate at the end of the year. And then Jeremy Robinson is in his junior season, which means 2024 will be his final season. So you've got to plan for even beyond that. And who knows, what if Jeremy Robinson uh you know continues your lineage here that you've had of Kyron Johnson Delaney Phelps and he becomes that next really

strong pass rusher and he has an opportunity to do what Lonnie Phelps did and I know Lonnie Phelps went undrafted but he says ah screw it I'm gonna go to the draft right you never know for sure you want to set yourself up there um and then of course like KU has other young talent waiting in the wings at both edge and defensive tackle who will be on the too deep this year or maybe not kind of be that next up whether it's players you brought in like austin booker and gage keys whether it's um guys who you feel like are going to break out this year like at the defensive tackle position uh with your tommy duns and dj withers of the world whether it's your guys that

you've brought in in like the class of 2023 like tony terry who you feel like could be something for you in a few years down the road but you're always building to the future and you can never have enough defensive linemen um we've heard from like jim panagos last offseason about how you know it's not really a set number like we don't go into a year with being like ah we're gonna play eight defensive linemen every year or every game uh that's our thing we're doing no he's just like if we have enough good ones we'll find playing time for them like maybe uh because especially that position and how many teams run on up tempo in the big 12 you want to keep guys fresh you want to keep guys healthy over the course of the season right think about

some of the teams that run super high tempo in the conference oklahoma tcu texas tech like these are teams that run fast-paced offenses and having better depth to get you through injuries over the course of the season and to get you through all that stuff you can never have enough of those defense alignment if they have 10 good ones they'll rotate all 10 in so uh that's part of this but also you're looking for possible impact defensive linemen, which is something that you have had with Kyron Johnson and Lonnie Phelps the past two years. And you have a question about can Jeremy Robinson be that guy? Will somebody else be that guy, be an impact defensive lineman this year? Deshaun Warner profiles into being someone who

you feel like can eventually be an impact defensive lineman in addition to giving you another talented body on, on that side of things. All right, we're going to finish up here with locked on Jayhawks overall thoughts on the class of 2024. Now the KU is at 14 and you know, maybe they are inching closer to being done recruiting from the high

school level of things here, locked on Jayhawks, finishing things up with locked on Jayhawks overall Overall thoughts on the class of 2024 now is the 14th commit class. I have a nice chapter about the high school recruits for KU that they're bringing in and the different classes over the past years and what exactly players being like top 1000 recruits.

So I have an update to that. I'll show it to you now. There is actually a slight difference now. Some of the rankings have been updated, you know, so you have certain guys who maybe weren't ranked and then they commit. So then they do a ranking for them. And so that has bumped some of ku's players who were recruits outside of the top 1000 just barely now if you look at it the 14 commits they still have three top 500s which is the second that they've had since 2010 which is the 24-7 composite launch um so that's really impressive especially when you compare it to the other ones that had three or four had 32 and 24 kids respectively in terms of the amount of commitments.

So again, like the red basically means the same post since 2010. The blue means first most. The yellow means third most. So KU's doing well. Top 500 kids, top 600 kids, top 800 kids. And then you look at the percentage of them just to give you a better idea of the quality of players since you're not bringing in the quantity. Well, 50% of your kids are top top 1000 and the second most was last year so the amount

of players that you're stacking onto each other back-to-back years is really impressive but because some of those kids were top 1000 commits and just barely fell out because somebody else got ranked and it scooted them down just a tiny bit or who knows i i feel like there has been a weird correlation where you know we see this in basketball where a lot of times a kid commits to ku basketball and it feels like their recruiting ranking goes up i almost feel like the opposite is happening with football where it's like oh kid commits to ku we're going to drop his recruiting ranking just a little bit i don't know if that's true or not it just sometimes feels that way because you know if you're looking at kids who are we're at a top 1,000 commit, this might be nine or 10 on the list.

So instead, what I wanted to do is not just look at the ranking, but on 24-7 sports, the composite, there is a grade. So it's like.321, right? And that's the number of how they're putting together all these different recruiting sites. So 0.8600 is an interesting number because it would represent a nice little jump up for KU as the overall class. And as you can see, recruits that they brought in with a grade of 0.8600 or better, you know, from really what, 2015 through 2022, you're mostly only bringing in one, two, three of those per year, with the exception really of that 2019 season when you brought in six of them. But this year, for the class of 2024, 10 of your 14 commits are.860 or higher. Last year, it was nine of your 14 so that means the percentage of your commits to our 0.6 or higher

which again that sounds like an arbitrary number but it really is a jump off for what would be a jump up in the level of talent the KU is bringing in that means that over 70 percent of KU's commits are 0.8600 grades or higher last year was 64 percent up two years for ku since 2010 and the distance between those two and the next best the third best for your percentage of commits in a class that were 0.8600 or higher you have to go all the way back to 2010 when it was 33 percent so you were more than doubling that up with your overall team recruiting ranking is 40. That's not going to be something that I'm honestly looking at that much because

if KU only brings in another high school recruiter too and you have 15 or 16 kids, it's going to be hard to compare those to classes that have 20 or 25 kids. Of course they're going to be ranked lower than some of those different teams or schools across the country. But when you look at the quantity of the player that KU is bringing in, this is unprecedented for what they'll do.

And very, very impressive there. That's the end of this episode. Find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. You can find our podcast wherever you get any of your podcasts. And you can also find us on our YouTube page where you can like and podcast wherever you get any of your podcasts and you can also find us on our youtube page where you can like and subscribe to the show we'll see you next time with don j