Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Football Spring Showcase Recap: What to Takeaway and Who Stood Out for KU?

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Recap of the Kansas Jayhawks football' spring showcase. What can we really take away from the game, and who stood out for Lance Leipold's team including Kevin Terry. Plus more reaction to what we saw from Jalon Daniels, Jason Bean, the defense and more.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND 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, we recap the KU Football Spring Showcase from Friday night. 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. You can also hear me right here on Locked on Jayhawks because you can listen to Locked on Jayhawks anywhere that you get any of your podcasts free and available. You can also find us on YouTube.

Subscribe to the show. Give us a little thumbs up if you could. Always helpful on our end of things. And on today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we're discussing the KU football spring game, spring showcase, recapping things. Overall takeaways, maybe players who intrigued or impressed me and then already a transfer out of the program, which I'm sure there will be more to come. But as of me recording right now, there's just been one. And we'll get to that coming up at the end of this show so i i think first of all when you look at the overarching thing of what

happened it actually ended up being more of a scrimmage type situation than i was anticipating going in you did end up with a lot of um you know whether it was like you kind of had the stretches at the beginning and the team's just doing their warmup stuff. And then you got out and it was scrimmage like settings, whether it was like a seven on seven situation or the full scrimmage type thing. Now, we didn't see necessarily an overwhelming amount of the ones playing. Like it really was a rotation of a lot of the different teams, the second unit, third unit, maybe even the fourth unit guys like sprinkling in there and getting reps throughout kind of the lineup and throughout the team that it's, it's maybe tough to evaluate too much of what we saw based on, Hey, I don't, I don't know how many reps this guy or that guy got. I will get into players who maybe impressed me in some of those limited or maybe intrigued

me might be the better word of putting it. But, you know, overall it was, it was more than I thought we would see from that standpoint. It was a colder night than you would have anticipated. It wasn't the most scintillating type of football that you'll be out there watching. It was, you know, when you're looking at both the offensive and defensive side of things.

We did see a few things from Andy Kotelnicki where he had the double pass with Jason Bean that just was unable to be caught. He had a few little plays up his sleeves that weren't maybe quite trick plays, but were misdirection-type plays that left the guy open, maybe in the flats or on a wheel route the other way or something that was kind of classic Andy Kotelnicki.

But for the most part, it was pretty vanilla on both sides of the ball in terms of what they were trying to do, right? You're not going to see a ton of trick plays or a ton of weird motions or a ton of, you know, blitzes from the corner positions or the safety positions from Brian Borland, more of vanilla type stuff from what you saw from both ends of the ball. And not something that you're going to have overwhelming takeaways from just in general because A, you have guys who are injured right now.

B, you don't have everybody on board. There's going to be more people joining in fall. C, there's going to be guys who are no longer on the team after they transfer out that are going to be back in fall. D, you had a bunch of the different second team, third team, fourth stringers who came into the game.

You kind of look up and down the lineup, and I don't know what is real, I guess, at this point. Like throughout a lot of the camp portion of things or the practice portion of things, I should say, like we saw the offensive line look one way, and then the offensive line, the starting offensive line we saw in the game was different than that you know we saw some guys who were maybe twos or threes mix into the starting lineup which makes you think okay well does that mean they're good enough to be in the starting lineup does it mean that or like they're just going to be contributors are they trying to give them a different look is it something where they're just trying to get them reps against better players like what does this mean and that's that's kind of the the toughest part to to look at this that it's tough

to have too many takeaways because it's it's hard in a setting like that to properly evaluate first of all um i think i said on friday that yeah, if Jalen Daniels throws an interception, which I think there were two of them, you know, maybe that means that the DB played it really well because we know Jalen Daniels is a known commodity that he is good. Right. Or if we know that a good receiver gets covered well by a DB and, you know, or if Kobe Bryant gets beat, we know he's a good corner. He was first team all big 12. Then that means something because you do have the point of reference to bring them to. But for a lot of guys where you don't know what their role is going to be, what their fit's going to be,

it's really tough on the offensive and defensive line. If a play gets stuffed for a one-yard loss on a running play, is the offensive line not good enough, or is the defensive line just overwhelming? You don't know the answer to that. It's tough to have too many takeaways in a game like this but i'm gonna try my best i'm gonna get to uh maybe some different player takeaways in this one i think overall just maybe uh positionally i thought the the first string receivers looked really good and being able to get second uh separation i thought the second and third string receivers not as much and i don't know if that speaks to the secondary or what um you saw a lot of guys you know not

or you didn't see a lot of guys i guess would be the way of putting it because of injury like we saw a little bit of devin neal but um not a ton of him like uh daniel highshaw wasn't even in pads he was just kind of wearing his jersey and stuff out there uh like at the dn position you're missing like jeremy robinson and patrick joiner out there um so you kind of had a mix of of both those things we saw a bunch of different dbs and linebackers come in there uh we mostly saw the one offensive line for at least the when the first unit was out there. We saw a lot of Jason Bean. I think Jason Bean probably had the most snaps among the quarterbacks. We saw some Jalen Daniels.

Then it was a lot of Jason Bean. We saw some more Ethan Vasco, then more Jason Bean. I thought that for Vasco, it wasn't like an overwhelmingly impressive game for him, but still just a redshirt freshman. But that was certainly somebody who people had their eyes on. You saw a lot of rotation with the different defensive line that were playing with each other. And again, that's without two possible starters.

I mean, one for sure with Jeremy Robinson and another in Patrick Joyner, who if he's not a starter, he's certainly going to be a high-level contributor. And then I think some of the tight end positions, like we saw a couple plays from some of the the backup tight ends like trevor cardell will huggins i thought made made a couple nice plays in there that got you looking but it's like how much is that real like are they going to be on the field enough or is it just going to be jared casey and mason fairchild in front of them so maybe tough to have too many overwhelming takeaways but let's get to maybe some some players who did intrigue or impress me here in

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those guys uh in the case of jaylen we've talked about this before with the quarterback position he likes to test things a lot of the times in those practice situations where he really likes to see what he can get away with um and sometimes that doesn't always lead to him being the best practice quarterback because it's like oh but he threw two interceptions today but then in the game he tightens it up so not really over concerned with that um ethan vasco i thought he had like that nice throw on the run it was like his first throw of the game and seven on seven rolling out to his opposite side at the left after that it was kind of a mixed bag from there uh when you look at the receiver position like obviously we know the guys like luke graham and lawrence arnold and you know

quentin skinner like those guys are going to be high level contributors starters all that stuff i thought tanaka scott uh was kind of up and down he made a couple nice plays he had a couple plays i'm sure he wished he would have been able to reel in the past but one receiver who really stood out was kevin terry and terry played a little bit with the ones played a lot with the twos but he was the consistent go-to target jalen hit him a couple times we saw jason bean go to like all throughout the way kevin terry was finding his way open and getting um openings for ku so i thought that was really interesting when you look at the receiver position with those three starters back in arnold skinner then Luke Grimm you know it's it's gonna be tough for guys to crack the the rotation and be

in front of them but we do know what their zero position you're still going to rotate a lot of guys in even if you do have those three mainstays up top and so it becomes a real competition KU has a lot of guys who could be in that next three so to speak right like do you go with trevor wilson uh working back tanaka scott um do you go with douglas emelian who i saw one play he didn't get the ball thrown to him but he just absolutely juked the the socks off of uh one of the receivers on like a little slant route in that uh or one of the dbs um that you could see that kind of route running combination and then kevin terry was ultra productive in the game. You know, those four guys and then any of the freshmen who are maybe coming in,

I don't know, I might be forgetting someone. It's going to be a real competition to get on the field. And I thought Kevin Terry was really impressive and possibly being that kind of reliable type of target to come off behind those top three receivers in front of him. Something else that really intrigued me. This is more than just one player,

was the offensive line configuration. So in most of practices, we've been kind of led to believe that Bryce Cable does a left tackle. Obviously right now, Mike Nowitzki is out. He's dealing with an injury. He didn't play in the spring game, hasn't really been practicing.

That changes things, right? But we'd seen Cable do a left tackle. We had seen, you know, Michael Ford moving over to center, maybe Dominic Poonie taking some snaps, Poonie in at one of the guards' positions. And then you could have, like, a right tackle, kind of that battle between Logan Brown and Kobe Baines on the right side.

And that was kind of what we've seen a majority of um but in this game they actually tried putting dominic pooney at left tackle in the very early going and then michael ford suffered some sort of injury i saw him walking around with you know an ice pack on his knee but you know he wasn't using any crutches or boot or anything so i think you hope he's going to be fine and you know obviously plenty of time off now um so that changed it up and then after that happened they had logan brown at left tackle not bryce cabledue so it's interesting because both guys were not bryce cabledue i don't know what that means. Did Logan Brown at left tackle. You had Kobe Baines at right guard. You had Bryce Cable do at right tackle. And then you move Dominic Poonie over to the middle.

So it's just very interesting. But that was a pretty consistent lineup after that injury for the rest of the ones in spring practice. What does that mean? Does that mean that, you know, because Cable Deer wasn't the guy at left tackle because I'd heard that he was taking nice steps forward at left tackle, or does that mean that they're not totally content with it

and that's why they wanted to try Poonie out there? And then when the injury happened, they said, well, we just have to put Logan Brown out there. Or was that just an excuse for them to try Logan Brown at left tackle? Because I'm sure ideally, like with his body size and with his potential you'd love to have him be a really good left tackle for you and was that the excuse you needed to slide him over there i i don't know what to think of the offensive line configuration now because it was one thing in

practice it was another thing at the start of the spring showcase it was another thing by the end of it you have the injuries to michael ford mike novitski not playing i don't know it's just going to kind of be weird but i also spencer lavelle was not there spencer lavelle well he was there he just wasn't suited up he didn't play so you have another injury there to the offensive line and what does that mean does lavelle come in does he start at one of the guard positions right um to where i think it's all good thing like this offensive line is deep for ku they've got a lot of starter level players i'm confident in the configuration they're going to have i just don't think we have an idea of what the actual configuration is going to be like maybe you can

have educated guesses about this or that but because we've seen a bunch of different lineup iterations it seems like we've been kind of thrown for a bit, and that'll be something that I feel like is going to be decided in the fall. I thought something else that intrigued me, impressed me. You saw a few flash plays from the defensive line. I didn't think the offensive line got enough push in the running game. I thought the offensive line did a really good job pass blocking. I didn't think they got a great push in the running game. Now, there were a few running plays that burst free um and maybe that comes with the more vanilla playing style right if you're going to play vanilla football and the offense isn't going to have their bells and whistles and all these guys going in motion and i don't know trick

plays more at your disposal like maybe it is just more base that it's easier to stop the run i don't know if that's part of it um i also don't know like this goes back to was it the offensive line wasn't great and run blocking or was it the defensive line did a really good job in preventing the run and i will say last year like the case for this team running the ball um there were a lot of plays where ku struggled to get push at the line of scrimmage and they ended up with zero yards one yard you know negative one yards but they had a lot of boom plays to make up for it right where they would all of a sudden gash you for a 12 13 yard run a lot of their successes running the ball though were off that kind of spread option triple option type attack they were running

where it might have been a little bit less about the push you're getting at the initial point of the attack and more about the scheme the the athletes running it and getting out into the open field as blockers so there is something to look for there but the fact that your run defense did pretty well overall and that you were getting a surge from some of those defensive linemen at different points like you know whether it was gage keys coming in there and making a nice play or so tommy dunn make a nice play like you can kind of go up and down and there were different d linemen who made nights different pushes or plays on that defensive line that kind of was interesting to me because you know overall this was a good running team for kansas last year and what are we talking about

with the defense i don't know how good they're going to be with as a pass rushing unit but they got good secondary if you can at least be good stopping the run even if you're not a great pass rushing unit without lonnie phelps well if you can be in third and six and third and seven more often because your run defense is better then you might just be you know you can blitz more or you can at least pin your ears back more where you're expecting the pass rush more and it will help your pass rush a lot better so be a better run defense I thought they showed some good play on the front seven in terms of stopping that run in the game Alex Reich was a very interesting player to me in this. So he transferred over.

I think he's originally from like Sweden. Was that a junior college where he was like playing safety? Transferred over to KU last year. They just used the year to kind of get his body more ready because he was like closer to like 200 pounds. And we saw him come in at linebacker, at the linebacker position. I saw him at times playing with theer position. I saw him at times

playing with the twos. I saw him at times playing with the threes. I'm trying to remember there might've been a snap or two where he was playing with the ones just to throw him in there. And I thought it was very interesting, his usage, because you're talking about a guy who was a safety, um, runs really fast, really good athlete. And maybe he is another one of those, you know, sub package linebackers like Craig Young where you can bring him in on a third down and say yeah you're a linebacker but you kind of play like a safety it's going to help us in coverage as opposed to this hard-hitting run-stopping linebacker being in there I was just very intrigued with where he was lining up and kind of being all

over the field I thought he made enough a couple nice plays I don't know that you know I don't expect him to be a starter or anything but that progression seems to be coming for him, which is certainly interesting. And then the depth of the secondary, I thought kind of impressed me. So I talked earlier, I thought the ones for the receivers were able to get good separation at times

against the DBs for KU. The twos and the threes sometimes had trouble gaining any separation against the DBs. Now this goes back in line. Is that a problem? Is the receivers, is it on the receivers? Is it on something with the offense or is it the depth of the secondary? I think they do have pretty good depth in the secondary. I saw Kalen out there at times with the twos who, I mean, that's, that's the guy who's going to be playing

a lot of snaps with the ones this year. Um, you have a lot of talent in that secondary, you know, and that's even without kenny logan and marvin grant and stuff suiting up that i was kind of impressed with the depth of the secondary you saw a couple nice plays made the one-handed interception against jaylen daniels was from a uh one of the depths of the secondary so i thought overall that was pretty impressive for me for ku in the spring game all right let's talk about that transfer out of the program. There will be more to come for KU football. We'll talk about why coming up next in addition to Damarian Alexander

transferring out with Locked on Jayhawks. So Damarian Alexander transferring out of the program. It's unfortunate because he's someone who came in with, you know, I think good potential, and I'm excited to see where he goes to next. I've heard he's just like a great dude, great guy, and you really wish him the best at his next stop. You can see for him, maybe he was viewing it as, yeah, there's a lot of guys possibly in front of me like Jeremy Robinson,

whenever Patrick Joyner can maybe get back from injury here. You have a couple other transfers coming into the program. You've got, I don't know, a lot of defensive end Hayden Hatcher, like trying to emerge in his final season that maybe it'd be a little tougher for him to get on the field and now this is i believe you're three for him so he's really trying to make inroads of that playing time um so you see why he transfers out obviously it hurts because the the pass rush has been maybe the weakness or the question so far for ku especially at those edge positions and you'd

like to have as many bodies as possible from the defensive end spot they could possibly make inroads into that weakness but right now KU is in a situation where um you know we haven't seen this in years past usually it's like well KU is short of the scholarship limit you know in the Beatty era by a large amount in the early 10 years of the Lance Leipold area, maybe by a few scholarships. They're actually over-scholarships, at least they were coming into the spring game. So they have to get rid of a certain number of players, have to leave the program and transfer out

so they can get back even. And then if they want to add any transfers from the portal, which seems likely to me, like it seems like they'd like to address maybe a player too, maybe not a ton of guys, but we saw them bring in like lorenzo mccaskill last year in the summer then that would mean another player would have to leave so he becomes the first of what i would assume should be a handful of guys that probably ends up leaving whether it's a combination of kind of being shown the door or just looking for more opportunity themselves and

it could be a good thing for kind of everybody in all parties, but it is a good problem to have. It's just a weird one because we're not used to it with KU football, where it's like, Oh, they are full on scholarships. You know, it's a good thing.

It is a good thing, but it does create some different challenges than we're used to in past years. All right. That's going to do it for this edition of locked on Jayhawks. We will have an episode coming at you tomorrow, talking more KU basketball transfer portal stuff. I don't know. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about some of the targets for KU.

That should be with Nick Schwert on tomorrow's show. You can find the show wherever you get any of your podcasts or on YouTube. You can hit me up at D Johnson radio on Twitter. That'll do it for today's episode of LOJ. See you tomorrow.