Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Football Quarterback Jalon Daniels Doesn't Practice Monday Due to Back Injury

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, Jalen Daniels missed practice with what appears to be a back injury or a tight back. We're going to discuss the possible severity of the injury after Lance Leipold met with the media, what it could mean long term, if there are any longer term repercussions, or if this does, you know, kind of indicate that there could be more injuries on the horizon on today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your 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. I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m.

Starting point is 00:00:47 on KLWN in Lawrence. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen. Every day we are free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. And you can also find us on our YouTube page. Like and subscribe to the show. We've been talking plenty of KU basketball, some of the Puerto Rico stuff, but something big that happened on monday uh there was some mentioning from bryson stricker on twitter about jaylen daniels having some sort of injury then on monday there were some pictures that

Starting point is 00:01:13 surfaced around of all the quarterbacks working out at practice jaylen daniels was not among them now that has since been taken down with some of that stuff because apparently jaylen daniels according to lance leipold and the staff was at practice he just wasn't there for that moment or you know he was on the sideline not like actually dressed in in the pads and and that sort of thing um I don't think there's really much I don't know more to it than that like you can understand why KU would be like oh crap this happened but also it's kind of funny if that's the case where it's like KU's like you know maybe nobody will notice if Jalen Daniels isn't there, right? Like, of course everybody was going to notice. So I don't, I don't, I don't know. Nonetheless,

Starting point is 00:01:51 he was not a practice. He did not practice, I guess is the way of putting it. It's not that he wasn't a practice. He did not practice on, on Monday. And Lance Leipold at his press conference on Monday morning said that he had back tightness. That is the kind of injury designation that he gave him with. Did not give a timetable on how long he could possibly be out. Apparently, according again to Lightpool, he threw some on Sunday. So that's telling you that maybe this was an injury that was suffered on Sunday, or maybe this was an injury that he had for a few days, and then he was good again, and then re-aggravated or something like that.

Starting point is 00:02:27 If it's a long-term back thing, that is a problem, because long-term back things are nagging, and you don't really see someone who's like, hey, I have back problems, and then all of a sudden, three months later, they're like, yeah, my back is totally great. I feel great. That's just something that doesn't work. But it could be a short-term back thing, too.

Starting point is 00:02:43 We saw Travis Kelsey. Back spasms sometimes can just be a short-term back thing too uh we saw travis kelsey like back spasms sometimes can just be a short-term thing i get it on occasion from just sleeping funny on my bed right like what if what if jaylen daniels just slept funny on his bed and he just had like back spasms he just needed a day off or something that is possible i don't know uh travis kelsey you know going back to the afc championship week remember like randomly on i don't know it's like tuesday or wednesday or thursday of that week uh before the chiefs played theals. He had back spasms and he like missed a practice, but then he was back for the game and you know, he was just fine. Sometimes there, there's those short-term back spasms that really are not really like a long-term issue and they can just disappear any day or they

Starting point is 00:03:17 can flare up at any day. Right. So it could just be that. I don't know. I don't need to speculate anymore on what type of back injury is because I'm not a doctor, right? But Leipold also said in the press conference, I thought this was pretty telling, that if we're saying stuff a week from now, then we can dive deeper. So if we're still talking about this a week from now, we can dive deeper. And that could be a couple reasons why. One, it could be at the beginning stages of trying to figure out exactly what is wrong or what the injury is, or you're giving it time to swell down or something like that. But I kind of took it as Lance Leipold saying, he doesn't view this as being like a long-term issue

Starting point is 00:03:58 and he doesn't think it's going to be a problem a week from now. Doesn't guarantee that it's not again. He said, you know, if it is still a problem a week from now, basically leaving the door open that, yeah, maybe it could be something that bothers him a little bit longer. But that also gives me optimism to the idea that I'm not expecting this to be a long-term thing, that he's basically saying, yeah, we can talk more about it next week if it's still a thing, because I'm kind of expecting it not to be a thing by next week. And then we won't even have to talk about it. And this whole thing will be kind of a moot point. So it kind of seemed to me like he wasn't overly concerned with the situation. Now that could just be, you know, being the head coach that you're supposed to be the CEO, you're supposed to be calm, cool,

Starting point is 00:04:36 and collected in those moments. And you want to do that for the team to where if somebody's suffering an injury, you know, you can't act like, oh, the world is falling because that's not going to come across well to the team. But I got the sense that it's going to be okay. That's not going to have an impact at the start of the season. This is just based on me kind of reading tea leaves here. And it might not have an impact on the season, but it is tough to tell with the lack of kind of information that we do have in regards to all of this as far as when I'm recording here on Monday night, August 7th, for this episode coming out on Tuesday. Without a doubt, though, the biggest concern I think that comes up here, you know, if this was just any injury to any player, right? If this was an injury that came up for, let's say, like Rich Miller, and Rich Miller missed a day of practice, and you're like, oh, but he's probably going to be fine in a week. Like, I don't think it'd

Starting point is 00:05:27 be as big of a deal. Part of that is because the quarterback just inherently is such an important critical position. Another part of it, Jalen Daniels is, you know, your preseason big 12 player of the year. So that magnifies the importance, but what else magnifies it is we've had this in the past with Jalen Daniels. And anytime there's smoke, you start to worry there is that fire in terms of another injury because we've seen this every year now. And it sucks for Jalen. It's not something that he can control necessarily. There are certain things you can do with, I don't know, weight training,

Starting point is 00:05:58 stretching, flexibility, and stuff to try to make yourself, the term that Matt Gildersleeve used, bulletproof, to try to make you more immune to suffering injuries. If you watch the quarterback documentary with Patrick Mahomes, his trainer does a lot of things to try to make him more immune to injuries. But at the end of the day, you can't fully avoid injuries. Nobody is perfect. Nobody is impenetrable. And so everybody's going to have different levels of those injuries. So it is unfortunate this happened, but it does kind of bring up almost like PTSD in a certain regard, because, you know, you go back to 2020, Jalen Daniels, true freshman season, which was the Les Miles era.

Starting point is 00:06:33 It was the COVID year. He came in as a starter. I forget if it was week two, week three. I don't know. It was early on in the season as a starter. He was like a 17 year old. The offensive line wasn't very good. He got beat up.

Starting point is 00:06:41 I think it was the Oklahoma game that they had like nine or 10 sacks and he got injured in that game. But there's an injury that first year, 2021 year one of the Lance Leipold era in camp, he suffered some sort of an injury. And I don't know how much that lingered into the beginning of the season, but for the staff, that was their first time being able to see, you know, Jalen Daniels actually throw a pass and pads along with the other quarterbacks. And so if you missed a couple of weeks, because you're injured, obviously you weren't going

Starting point is 00:07:07 to win the starting quarterback job, which ended up going to Jason Bean. Now, Jalen obviously took over at the end of the year, but that injury cost him maybe those first nine games of that season. Then you go to, or eight and a half games. Then you go to 2022, obviously the separated shoulder. I don't know if they ever fully signified what exactly the shoulder injury was for Jalen Daniels and then you go

Starting point is 00:07:30 to this year now and maybe again this is minor, maybe this is something that isn't worth anything, maybe this is something that if it was game week, he'd be totally fine playing like we just saw with KU basketball Arteria Morris had like a what was it called, like a bruised bone on his leg or his knee

Starting point is 00:07:45 or something like that where they said yeah we're just going to precautionarily hold him out if this was like a game he'd probably play maybe that's what this is too right it could just be that it's just when you when you compound it with some of the past injuries to Jalen Daniels which I'm not trying to you know put him at fault or anything like that I'm just saying it is unfortunate it gives you that scare level of that kind of PTSD of like, oh, no, not again. Because this is such a talented quarterback. This is a kid that you're hitching your wagon to to having this great season. He is such an unbelievable player, an unbelievable person off the field,

Starting point is 00:08:15 and super fun to talk to in the media. And you don't want to go without that into the season. And we've seen what happens before when you don't have him. You don't want to get back to that point. You heard the term bulletproof that's scary when if the whole idea of the offseason was to get jalen daniels bulletproof if literally through a week two weeks of camp he already suffered some sort of injury makes you feel like there's not quite in fact bulletproof and that does scare you a bit headed into the season so this might be a nothing burger this might be something we look back on at the end of the season and be like,

Starting point is 00:08:46 Oh, Jalen played all 12 games and he was fine and he was able to do a good job avoiding hits and he didn't have any other injuries. And it was just a little back spasm thing. He slept on his back, funny, whatever it is. It could just be something like that.

Starting point is 00:08:56 It's just when you compound it with the other stuff that's happened to him in the past, it scares you because the alternative of not having the best quarterback in the big 12 is not a fun process. Even though you do feel like you have a really good backup quarterback, and it would certainly put some more stress on that third string battle. So I want to talk about both of those here, just in case there is anything long-term, or if it is a bigger deal, or if this is a sign of more to come later in the season, even though I don't think it's necessarily that, good to be prepared, I guess, at the very least.

Starting point is 00:09:25 First, though, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by Bird Dogs. I'm wearing my Bird Dogs hat. Bird Dogs makes you look good. Bird Dogs has the stretch khaki shorts designed to fit slimmer through the thigh and leg, giving you a truly sculpted look, doing the exact same thing as Lululemon, but fitting way better. They're airy. They're free.

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Starting point is 00:10:59 We promise you that. All right, on to some talk about Jason Bean. Hypothetically, if this injury were to be a sign of other injuries or were to be long-term, which again, I don't necessarily know that I'm buying into that, but it's good to plan ahead. If Jason Bean were to say, start every game for you, just to give like a full gigantic picture of what could possibly happen here, how does that affect this team's floor? How does that affect this team's ceiling? Let me remind you of Jason Bean's pace from last year. Before we get into this conversation, he basically was the starter

Starting point is 00:11:32 for four and a half games, four games, the TCU second half. I'm just going to call it five because you add in some of the games that he came in for a throw here, there, and maybe it totals up to be about five games. And we're going to extrapolate those five games that he played into a 12 game season and again you could even extrapolate further and say 13 games of the bowl you could even extrapolate based on four and a half games as opposed to five if you want these numbers would look even better but this is if you take his five game pace into a 12 game season into a dozen games he would be on pace for last year, 64% completion rate, 3,072 passing yards, 43 total touchdowns, 10 to 10 interceptions, and 533 rushing yards. Total it up, that's 43 total touchdowns and 3,605 total yards

Starting point is 00:12:20 is what the pace would be there for Jason Bean. Obviously, some of those stats are ballooned maybe a little bit because you got down a lot in some of those games. You think to the Baylor game, you get down 28-3. Of course, you're going to have to pad your stats a little bit to get back in that game. Oklahoma game, couldn't stop them. You're going to have to go back and forth and pad your stats a little to get back in the game. But those stats prove that he was obviously producing in those moments that you at least had to get back into the game. And it wasn't always, you know, to the level of Jalen Daniels, um,

Starting point is 00:12:51 like some of the processing stuff was different. Like some of the, the easy throws you think back to the Arkansas game, obviously not as the starter there, I think did TCU game, the little, uh, swing route to Devin Neal that who knows he might've scored a touchdown and KU goes for two against the Horned Frogs and maybe TCU is not even in the college football playoff, right? Think back to some of the little throws there that Jalen probably hits. It's just some of the easy throws that maybe he made a little more consistently. Some of the processing stuff, just a little faster for Jalen Daniels. The option game, not as good with Jason Bean because he's not as tough of a runner, doesn't have as good a vision. There are little things that are obviously better that add up for Jalen Daniels, which is why Jalen is your

Starting point is 00:13:28 starter, is the Big 12 preseason offensive player of the year. But I believe Jalen Daniels is the best quarterback in the Big 12. So that's not a slight to be like, yeah, I think Jalen's a little bit better than you. Jason Bean's numbers were good enough that if he would have done that over the full course of the season and came back this year, we would be viewing him as a top four or five quarterback in the Big 12. And at the very least, even if I take into account some of those deficiencies I still mentioned, I'd be fine if you ranked Dylan Gabriel, Will Howard, Quinn Ewers, maybe Tyler Shuck in front of him, maybe even the TCU starter, because just in that offense, they're going to put up a lot of points.

Starting point is 00:14:07 But for me, it'd be close with like Jason Bean and John Rhys Plumlee, who's like this dual threat, super fast quarterback, who's probably the fastest player on UCF. And you could argue Jason Bean's like the fastest player on Kansas. I think there are some similarities there. And shock in our Big 12 locked on quarterback rankings, I forget if he was fifth or sixth. So that means that Jason Bean, with him, you have a top half quarterback as your backup.

Starting point is 00:14:26 That means that he might be a top five quarterback in the Big 12. And obviously if Jalen Daniels were to be injured, you would look at that as an unfortunate drop off. At the same point in time, if you blindfolded yourself to what Jalen Daniels did last year, and you viewed it from the scope

Starting point is 00:14:44 of where Kansas football has been the previous decade, where they have outside of the one year of Carter Stanley, outside of like the six games of Michael Cum in the Big 12. And you'd be like, yes, we have a competent quarterback. We have a top half of the league quarterback. We have a borderline top five quarterback in the Big 12. That at least gives us a chance to make a bowl game. And you saw that. They beat Oklahoma State by 21 points. You beat another Big 12 team by three touchdowns. Obviously, all of that wasn't Jason Bean.

Starting point is 00:15:21 But he was outstanding in that game. Super efficient. Great running ball. Defense was obviously good, too. Devin Neal was, you know Bean but he was outstanding in that game super efficient great running ball defense was obviously good too Devin Neal was you know all-american level in that game um but that's kind of the point here so I think the floor and the ceiling do change if Jason Bean were to be your guy in a given game if Jason Bean were to be your guy over the course of the season like if I view it from a season perspective and then you can kind of I guess map this down into if it was a game to game perspective with Jalen Daniels. I think the floor for me is probably like if he plays all 12 games is five or six wins.

Starting point is 00:15:54 If you're telling me that the defense is better than it was last year, then the floor with Jalen Daniels is probably seven or eight wins. Now, Jason Bean, if the defense is not better than it was last year, floor might be three or four wins. If it is better than last year, floor might be four, five, six wins, right? Depends how much better it is. The ceiling with Jalen Daniels, if the defense is better, maybe it is nine or 10 wins. But the ceiling with not much of a better defense for Jalen, I don't know, probably what eight or nine wins. And then the ceiling for Jason Bean, if the defense isn't better, might be six or seven. If the defense is better than maybe it's six, seven or eight, right? So you're talking about

Starting point is 00:16:36 maybe an extra win, maybe two either way on the ceiling or the floor, dependent on if the KU defense is better versus Jalen Daniels versus Jason Bean. And that's okay, because at the end of the day, even if Jason Bean were your starter for all 12 games, you feel like you could and should contend to make a bowl game. And that would be deemed another successful season for KU. Obviously, you'd love to have an increase in wins. Obviously, you'd love to do even more. But at the very least, if you can get back to another bowl game, fans would be ecstatic with that and Jason mean at least gives you that so it might not be as high of a ceiling might be a little lower of a floor but you know it's at least good enough to

Starting point is 00:17:13 accomplish a lot of the goals that you need in case that does happen this year which again it might not this might just be you know uh freaking out too far ahead of time but I think it's good to uh at least bring up all right I want want to get into the battle for the third string at the quarterback position because it becomes a lot more into focus, a lot more important if there are any injuries to Jalen Daniels. First, though, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Football season about to kick off.

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Starting point is 00:18:21 That's fanduel.com slash locked on. Okay, finishing things up up the battle for the third string job uh there are two other uh well i guess uh you know no one's not even a scholarship player but it seems like there is a heavy battle for third string right now ben easters is a player that was recruited under the brent dearman system because he was a fast processor kind of an accurate quarterback not an overly huge arm um and they got into him as a junior, I believe, when he committed. They were hoping for a big senior year for him to propel on. It didn't blow up as much as they hoped for,

Starting point is 00:18:52 but there are still some traits that you really like there. So he came in redshirted his first year. He'll be a redshirt sophomore this year. He's in this quarterback competition for QB number three. Then Mikey Pauly, who was a state champion at Blue Valley Northwest. Derby wins it every year. Not a couple of years ago, Blue Valley Northwest trounced Derby in the state championship in 6A, and they had a really good team. Mikey Pauly was the quarterback of that team. He ended up going to Nebraska. I don't know which sport he was on scholarship for because

Starting point is 00:19:22 he was a baseball player too and football. I think it was for baseball. I could be wrong on that. And also, I know there's certain NCAA rules about whichever sport first, I think, might have to be your scholarship. So maybe it was a football thing. I don't know. That goes back to like some Miami and I think it was Florida State. They used to like bring on guys for football but give them like track and field scholarships. So I don't know the ruling on that.

Starting point is 00:19:44 But anyway, with Mikey Pauly, you probably have more potential. You have more talent. He's a bigger kid. He's got a stronger arm. He's a better runner. With Easter's, you have more of the accuracy in the processing game. If Pauly can catch up in some of those regards, he would be the guy. And I think that's going to be tough because the quarterback position,

Starting point is 00:20:02 especially in a complicated offense, which Andy Kotelnicki runs, it takes a lot of time to get used to the offense if he can get used to it and get used to the playbook I think he'll eventually usurp Ben Easter's but could that be midway through the season could that be at the end of the season could that be next year in spring ball I don't know it's very possible Ben Easter's is the third string to start off the year because he does have that head start on that advantage but either way you know last year I think you felt okay with Ethan Vasco as your third string even though he was a true freshman there were a lot of good things you heard about him from the staff and the potential in the future he'd have and throwing on the run and the quick twitch arm all that sort of stuff it is a little bit more of an unknown this year and that doesn't

Starting point is 00:20:40 mean that Ben Easter's and Mikey Pauly can't be to that but Mikey Pauly's a preferred walk-on now I wouldn't be surprised if he earns a scholarship in a year or two or something um but you know that that's almost something where with Ben Easter's you didn't know if he was ever going to hit the field for you for Kansas so maybe there are levels of improvement maybe you know having that um maybe a little bit more limelight on you of being like hey this could be a really important third string job because if Jalen's injured, now all of a sudden we're a second team guy and Jason Bean, he's a runner. We saw him in 2021 get knocked out of the Kansas State game. I could easily be on the field for this team. So you hope that's the case, but that is a little bit scary that you have kind of an untested

Starting point is 00:21:20 and kind of position where you don't really know what the answer would be. You would be going with a variable that you don't know the number to that variable. So I guess it just depends when it is, but maybe if you can wait, if there is that injury, if it doesn't come to later in the season, maybe that gives enough time for Mikey Pauly to catch up and he can at least be interesting with some of his ability and physical tools early on in his KU tenure. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. Tomorrow's episode, we're going to be joined by Nick Schwert.

Starting point is 00:21:50 We have some more KU football previews to go over, and who knows if there's any other breaking news around the KU sports world, then maybe we can get to that. But you can hit me up with any questions at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter. You can give us a follow, and you can also check us out anywhere you get any of your podcasts. Subscribe to us on our YouTube page. Give us a like if you could also check us out anywhere you get any of your podcasts. Subscribe to us on our YouTube page. Give us a like if you could.

Starting point is 00:22:08 Helpful on our end of things. And see you next time with Locked on Jayhawks.

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Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Football Quarterback Jalon Daniels Doesn't Practice Monday Due to Back Injury

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