Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Football Adds Two Wide Receivers for 2025 Including Two-Sport Star Jaden Nickens

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's bonus Locked On Jayhawks, KU football has two receiver commits for the class of 2025. Their newest, a four-star in Jaden Nickens, committing to KU earlier today. You are Locked On Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Derek Johnson, you can find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. This is Locked On Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day. We are free and available anywhere you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:00:37 Also on YouTube, where you can like and subscribe to the show. And on today's edition, we've got a bonus episode of Locked On Jayhawks because KU has two recent receiver commits to the class of 2025. Bryson Hayes, in-state kid, speedster receiver from Mays High School. Jaden Nickens became the latest KU commit committing to the Jayhawks earlier on Thursday morning. We're getting into some information about both players, scouting report on both and what it means for KU at the receiver position for next year,

Starting point is 00:01:06 as well as the class of 2025. So let's start right there. Bryson Hayes committed last week. He was a three-star receiver from Mays High School in the state of Kansas. He had Avery Johnson throwing him the ball a couple years ago and averaged like 20, 30 yards a catch. It was pretty incredible. And then in the class of 2025, he's now listed as the number 11 player in the state according to 24-7 sports

Starting point is 00:01:31 he actually was committed to Nebraska that was back on April 14th but he decommitted to the Huskers on November 9th with a flip to KU attached to it so you add an in-state kid you add a speedster at the receiver position and we'll get into more of his scouting report in a second. Then the news from Thursday morning, Jaden Nickens, who is a four-star wide receiver from Chatsworth, California and Sierra Canyon High School, although he's played at a couple other different high schools along the way too. I think before that was in the state of Oklahoma, but he's in the class of 2025 as well. He's listed as a top 25 player in the state of California. He decided to pick the Jayhawks over going to Cal,

Starting point is 00:02:12 over going to Georgia, Oklahoma state, Texas A&M. Obviously you never know to what extent, you know, every offer is, but I think at one point he was actually committed to Oklahoma university or is it university,

Starting point is 00:02:24 Oklahoma, Oklahoma university, whatever a bit back. He is a two-sport player. So this is a KU basketball commit and a KU football commit, and he plans to play both at KU. So think of on the higher end, Charles Gordon, Ray Evans, hypothetically Keon Coleman, I guess on the not not-as-high-end, James Susinski. But either way, it's happening.

Starting point is 00:02:46 That is going to be a cool thing to watch and break down between him playing those two. All right, let's get into the scouting reports of both players coming up in a moment. This is Locked on Jayhawks. Our episode today is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Get ready to tackle the NFL action with FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook,

Starting point is 00:03:04 because right now new customers can bet $5. You get $150 in bonus bets if you win. FanDuel Sportsbook app gives you everything you need to place live bets on the NFL all in one place. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more on the same page where you place your bets.

Starting point is 00:03:23 Just visit FanDuel.com to join today. You'll get started with $150 in bonus bets if you win your first $5 bet. That's at Fanduel.com. Never waste a hunch. Make every moment worth. Fanduel, an official sportsbook partner of the NFL. Continuing on with our bonus episode of Locked on Jayhawks, KU football getting two commits in forms of receivers for the class of 2025.

Starting point is 00:03:49 One from right here in state with Bryson Hayes, the other from formerly the neighboring state, but now California in Jaden Nickens. So let's start with scouting board on Hayes. He's listed as a 86 graded three star in the class, top 1000 national recruit. I say that all the time for KU football. Like if you're bringing a top 1000 kids, that's, that's a big deal.

Starting point is 00:04:11 Stands at five foot 11, 180 pounds. This is the scouting report from Alan new from 24 seven sports brings track speed to the football field. Big play guy, but want to see him continue to show the whole route tree also needs to add weight and get stronger, but his lightning in a bottle and should have a chance to help his college team on special teams as well.

Starting point is 00:04:31 So I went back watching some of the highlights, some of the tape, and this guy looked like the Deshaun Jackson of Kansas high school football. It was just, I mean, deep balls, special team returns, screen passes that he just took to the house. Sometimes he would go untouched just weaving through defenders with how fast he was. Other times you'd see some moves in there. I will say I was impressed by how physical of a runner he was for,

Starting point is 00:04:57 you know, obviously it's going to be different once you get to KU and you're playing a power front level and the corners you're going against are just as big as you, if not bigger. But at the Kansas high school level, he was like running even you know power through guys break tackles he had a really good spin move that i was impressed with um he was just moving at a different speed than the rest of the guys in the tape that i watched now the beauty is apparently he has run like you know he has around four four speed something like that, at some of the camps that he's been to. So that tells you that it's not just fast from a high school state of Kansas level.

Starting point is 00:05:30 It's fast of any level of football that you're talking about. So this is a guy that does come in, and I expect to make a real difference for you at some point in his career. Maybe it takes a couple years for him to add weight to his body and something like that. I'll be completely honest, though. You could convince me. We're going to get into Jay Nickensens scouting report here in a second. And I think Jay Nickens is that's a fantastic addition for the KU staff. You could convince me the Hayes

Starting point is 00:05:52 actually ends up being the biggest impact player of the receivers from this class. You could convince me that because of the speed. And I think he's a perfect fit for what this offense wants to be under Jeff Grimes. Now, I guess that's a question about, well, is it going to still be Jeff Grimes moving forward? I think we've seen enough these recent weeks where you expect that to be the case. He's under contract a couple more years. The offense wants to be deep balls. It wants to have those jet sweeps, those reverse plays. It wants to have receiver screens. He's going to be elite at doing a lot of those things for KU. Now, as far as Nickens goes, he is the higher graded player,

Starting point is 00:06:27 90 graded four-star in the class, top 400 national recruit on the 24-7 composite. And depending where you look, I've seen 6'2", 6'3", 6'4". I guess if we would just want to middle it and call 6'3", whatever, right around there, 6'3"-ish, about 170 pounds. So good size for a wide receiver. And there's not as much, interestingly enough, there's not as many highlights. There's not as much like scouting reports, I would say,

Starting point is 00:06:52 that is readily available on the internet for a guy like Nickens, as you would think for a four-star player. But from what I saw, this dude is an elite jump ball winner. You throw the ball up, he is going to fight and win the ball. It almost becomes cliche. You think of guys who are he is going to fight and win the ball. It almost becomes cliche. You think of guys who are good basketball players and are good football players. A lot of them end up being tight ends, but this was also the case with Keon Coleman, who was a too smart player at Michigan State, ends up transferring just playing football at Florida State and becomes

Starting point is 00:07:18 an early second round pick and one of the top receivers on the Buffalo Bills this year. There's some comparisons there. Coleman was a bigger receiver, and he won those box-out battles. And I think you see a lot of that from Nickens on film, that he is really good making catches in traffic. And I think that's what's cool about bringing on both these guys. You get a little bit of differences, right? I mean, that can be so important when you're talking about personnel

Starting point is 00:07:42 in a football game. You have certain guys do certain things well, and you play to to that and you have other guys do other things well and like you think of this year's KU football you know receiving core with Arnold he's maybe that intermediate guy with Skinner he's that deep ball guy with Luke Grimm he's maybe that you know underneath guy the the slot guy right you get a little bit of differences here and he becomes your jump ball winner snatches the ball out of the way of the air I will say he has more speed than you would think for a bigger receiver. I don't know that he's going to be as fast as Hayes,

Starting point is 00:08:08 but he has enough speed to be a four-star recruit and to be fast enough. I think just a really impressive receiver from some of the stuff I saw. At the same point, he is a bit raw. I'm pretty sure I saw something about the idea that he is like sixth on his own high school team in receiving yards, which that might be a little bit misleading because they do throw to a lot of, you know, this isn't a flex bone offense that isn't throwing the ball. It's also a little bit misleading because I think this is either his second or third high school. I know at one point he was in high

Starting point is 00:08:36 school in Oklahoma. I don't know if he went to another high school before this, but you transfer into a new high school your senior year. A lot of times the pecking order is going to be kind of established already. And so from that standpoint, like, like i don't know it can be a little bit difficult there um but that does make you think like if you're thinking okay this guy's a four-star ku is going to be losing a bunch of receivers after this year he's going to come in right away and i expect him to start as a freshman i don't know maybe the idea that okay he went to a new high school and now he's maybe the third, fourth, fifth, sixth receiver, whatever it is. Maybe that tells you that, hey, there's a lot of skills there,

Starting point is 00:09:09 but it's going to take some more time. So I wouldn't expect him to be a year one starter at KU. But in terms of long-term impact, you can probably expect Nickens to at some point at KU make a huge difference. And the fact that he is so good from a physical standpoint, making those jump ball catches wouldn't surprise me if he's getting on the field in year one and catching a touchdown or two in the red zone with that jump ball ability as far as on the basketball court because he is that two-way player uh bill self uh there was some stuff like he's going to take him to play basketball as well and if you are kansas i believe the rule is um you only count to the scholarship of the first sport you play in.

Starting point is 00:09:45 Now, I don't know if the new scholarship rules, if that's affected by that, but that means that he wouldn't be under scholarship for KU basketball. You do have the expansion that you can go up to 15 scholarships if you want it now for basketball anyway. I don't know that KU is going to do that regardless, but you think about it, if you're basically getting a free scholarship player, if you're KU basketball, who is a player that, you know, I think he's ranked as a three-star in basketball by ESPN. Like maybe on his own merit, if he was just a basketball player, you wouldn't take him.

Starting point is 00:10:14 But he's on that same level of maybe like a Noah Shelby, who you brought in as like a walk-on that can maybe earn a scholarship as a former player from like Rice and Vanderbilt. Like maybe that's the type of guy you'd be getting with Nickens. He would be at, you know, schools like that and eventually might transfer his way up into Kansas. And so you get another player that gives you some more depth that maybe doesn't really count for the scholarships.

Starting point is 00:10:33 I think that's a good get kind of all the way around. All right, let's finish up what it means for the class, KU at receiver and KU basketball. This is Locked on Jayhawks. Episode today is brought to you by GameTime, which has a new feature called GameTime Picks that makes getting tickets to see your favorite teams play live even easier. GameTime Picks filters out the fluff to show you all the incredible deals

Starting point is 00:10:55 on great seats so you don't have to waste time searching through thousands of tickets. They've all in pricing, where you can toggle that feature, show the total up front, no surprise fees at checkout. Nothing's worse than that. And with seat views, you get a panoramic view from your seat. So again, no more surprises. You don't show up to the stadium and they're like, oh, I didn't realize this was going to be the scene angle. Boom. They're taking away the surprises in a good way. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets, game time picks, download the game time app, create an account and use code locked on college for $20 off the first purchase. Terms apply.

Starting point is 00:11:23 Again, create an account and redeem code LockedOnCollege. L-O-C-K-E-D-O-N-C-O-L-L-E-G-E for $20 off. Download GameTime today. What time is it? Game time. Finishing things up on this bonus episode of LockedOnJayhawks. What does this mean for KU? Well, let's start with the basketball one real quickly.

Starting point is 00:11:41 I don't necessarily expect Nickens to be somebody who's getting on the court year one for ku a lot of times you see these guys go into these two sports and maybe they end up just focusing on one down the road in a year or two but at the very least he becomes a practice player gives you extra body extra depth that is a more athletic probably better player than you'd be getting with some of your walk-ons and maybe he does develop into something right like maybe by year three he ends up being a rotation player maybe by year four he ends up being a starter right you never really know how that's going to work but I definitely think I view this more from the football lens and from the football lens so you add it on to the addition of Hayes both receivers coming into the class. KU now has 16 commits for the class of 2025.

Starting point is 00:12:28 Four of those 16 are wide receivers. And so you look at it, Hayes is now the sixth highest rated commit in the class for KU. He's the second highest rated receiver. Nickens is now the highest rated receiver and the highest overall player in the class for KU. And so they clearly make the overall class a little bit better,

Starting point is 00:12:46 but they also make that receiving class better when you add in to Cook and Nagy, what they're coming into from the receiver position. But yeah, Arnold graduates. Skinner graduates. Grimm graduates. Trevor Wilson graduates. Those are your three starting receivers, and really your top four receivers gone.

Starting point is 00:13:03 And you look at the depth chart next year. Okay, Keaton Kubeka, who I think you heard more about last year as a true freshman um took a redshirt year in the end but was playing some special teams same kind of thing this year um we haven't really seen him play that much as an actual receiver though so like what is he going to bring to the table as a redshirt sophomore I do like Doug Emelian uh I don't think he's gotten as much play this year as he did last year, but the flashes we saw, I think his redshirt senior next year, he'll be a serviceable starter for you. You have Bryce Cohan who came in as a walk-on.

Starting point is 00:13:30 He's a redshirt freshman. Jared Sample who redshirted redshirt freshman. I don't know what to expect there. I think you can expect this. Kansas is going to hit the transfer portal to try to get another receiver to who knows, maybe even three at this point in the portal season. But adding these freshman guys sets you up that, you know, you can add ideally some senior transfers into the program

Starting point is 00:13:50 that some of these freshmen come in. Maybe they take a redshirt year. They just, you know, have a rotational year in, and then it gives them a year to get more ready for the show, for the starting position that they'd have another year down the road. So clearly adding to that next class, and these are guys that you plan to be catching passes from Isaiah Marshall and or David McComb or some of these quarterbacks that you're bringing in, Jalen Mason, right?

Starting point is 00:14:15 Whoever the next quarterback is after Jalen Daniels, this is the receiving class that you look to and kind of say, okay, you're going to be connected with that quarterback in a real way. And we need some players out of this. And you got two good ones in the class coming recently over the last week. All right. That'll do it for this episode of locked on Jayhawks bonus show. Don't forget.

Starting point is 00:14:34 You can check out our crossover episode with the talking BYU. We will also have a KU BYU locked on Jayhawks solo preview later in the week. We got a KU Oakland basketball preview later in the week and plenty of content that came out over the last week of recaps and talking all sorts of KU action here on the show. So see you next time with LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Football Adds Two Wide Receivers for 2025 Including Two-Sport Star Jaden Nickens

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.