Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Tackle Logan Brown Declares for NFL Draft + National Signing Day Class Thoughts

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, Kansas star offensive tackle Logan Brown declares for the NFL draft and it was National Signing Day and Kansas lost a couple players to the transfer portal. We get into all of it on today's show. I think it's just been the weather. 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, Blue Sky at Derek Johnson. This is Locked On Jayhawks. We have a bonus episode for you here today. It's National Signing Day for football.

Starting point is 00:00:38 We're going to go over the overarching thoughts on the class, what it means. KU football lost a couple of DBs in the trade for portal, but the thing we're starting off with here, Brown offensive tackle but a great season for KU starting at tackle as declared for the NFL draft we're going to get into that and plenty more and why that is a huge loss for KU for the 2025 season so let's start right there on this bonus show with Logan Brown when you look at the highest graded offensive tackles, left tackle and right tackle on Pro Football Focus,

Starting point is 00:01:11 you look at the power four. So 70 teams in the power four plus Notre Dame. You wind up with, let's see, four, five, six, seven, eight, or the number eight offensive tackle in Logan Brown. He had an 80.9 grade according to Pro Football Focus. He was a 77.6 in pass block. He was an 80.7 in terms of run blocking. When you narrow that down even more into just the Big 12, you find yourself with Logan Brown being the third highest graded tackle in the conference at 80.9 only behind Spencer Fano and Wyatt Milam for West Virginia and the fourth highest graded tackle according to Pro Football Focus in the Big 12 was another Kansas tackle Bryce Cabledew Bryce Cabledew is not going to be back next season that's because he has exhausted his eligibility he is gone at the end of the

Starting point is 00:02:03 season and so now you're losing both tackles and and you look at KU this year offensive line was certainly one of the strengths of this team and now you're gonna have to overcome losing both offensive tackles this is not like the NBA draft where he's gonna test the process you're like you go or you don't and so uh a guy who was a former five-star recruit who's been in college for five years two at Kansas one with the uh season ending injury in his first full season at Kansas and and then the three seasons at Wisconsin. You can understand why he'd be ready to move on to the NFL. He had all those great grades. We kind of talked about earlier, he's not popping up on a ton of mock drafts, but I think when teams start

Starting point is 00:02:38 to do more research on him, start to study the tape a little bit more, once his name is officially out there in the draft, I envision he'll'll be somebody especially with the prospect pedigree he had that it would not shock me if he ends up being drafted into the nfl right so uh obviously for kansas you now look at the offensive line for next year and i mean already in general like you're losing a lot of players a lot of starters on next year's team um you look at it and, okay, Calvin Clements can be back as an offensive tackle who has at least started games for you, even though he wasn't the full-time starter. But you look at the rest of the offensive line and it's like, okay, now you still have a big decision for Bryce Foster. But at offensive tackle, you could be starting,

Starting point is 00:03:16 who's going to be the other guy? Is it going to be James Livingston? Are you going to have to go into the transfer portal? Do you have a redshirt freshman like Carter Lewrofsky who's ready to go? I don't know if that's going to be the case so a lot of questions about that other tackle spot and then you get into the discussion of okay that's a huge loss this guy was one of the best offensive linemen in the big 12 that's going to certainly make things more difficult 2025 it's certainly going to make you scramble for more uh offensive linemen in the transfer portal it also does it affect the decision of jaylen daniels if you're jaylen daniels you know you're looking at it and going okay i'm already losing devon

Starting point is 00:03:49 yell i'm already losing my three starting receivers um now i'm going to be losing both offensive tackles too do i want to in my final year of college next year to better set myself up to have a chance of going into the nfl do i want to transfer somewhere else that has more ready-made pieces? Or is it a wait-and-see approach from Jalen to see, okay, who does Kansas go after in the transfer portal to bring in the replacements, so to speak? And obviously, you do feel good

Starting point is 00:04:14 that you at least have Calvin Clements to start one of those tackle spots. But I think you were going to feel really good if you had Logan Brown and Calvin Clements both back. And so this is a huge loss for KU. Obviously, for Logan Brown, you totally understand it and you wish him well. And like I said, I think you'll have a solid shot at getting drafted into the NFL draft, which is always cool when you see a player, you know, get to realize their dreams and see that Kansas under their name on the draft card as well. So obviously a big loss

Starting point is 00:04:38 for KU. They're going to have to overcome now in the transfer portal. And with, you know, Logan Brown, I thought that he was certainly one of the more underrated players in the transfer portal. And with, you know, Logan Brown, I thought that he was certainly one of the more underrated players in the conference this season. I mean, obviously, with offensive linemen, you're not getting a ton of notoriety. So it makes things just even that much more difficult for a Kansas team

Starting point is 00:04:54 that is losing so much coming into the offseason. All right, let's continue on here. We're going to get into National Signing Day. We got some thoughts on the overall recruiting process or the overall recruiting class for KU and how it ranks according to

Starting point is 00:05:07 past KU classes, past Lance Lightbulb classes. We'll get to that next as well as the two latest transfer portal departures from the KU defensive backroom. This is Locked on Jayhawks. Our episode today is brought to you by Better Together. And you can download Better Together from either the App Store or the Google Play Store.

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Starting point is 00:06:18 but it's better together. Again, download Better Together because winning alone is fun, but it is better together. All right, continuing on here, what this means for the overall class for KU. Because, you know, I could tell you certain scouting reports on some of these players, and I've watched their highlight films and stuff, but, like, I'm not going to be as good as the – I haven't gone out and watched these guys as some of the people you see online and 24-7 sports and stuff who are grinding the tape and taking a look at this stuff about you know what you're getting

Starting point is 00:06:51 specifically in each player um but i can tell you a big picture about the class so right now kus 15 commits they all ended up signing with ku on national signing day you look at it, two of them are top 500 recruits. If you sort things by, okay, so 24-7 sports, it goes back to the 2010 season when you look at that. Well, when you look at the most top 500 recruits, and I'm taking this based off the 24-7 composite, by the way, that would tie the fourth most for most top 500 commits KU has ever gotten in a class. You have the Turner Gill class in 2010. You have the Lance Leipold class in 2024. Turner Gill class in 2011 had three or more. This one has two. If you go by top 600 commits, again on the 24-7 sports composite, this one winds up tied second. You have the 2010 Turner Gill class, which had five top 600 recruits. You look at Lance Lightbulb's class in 2024, and this class both have four of them. And when you look at that Turner Gill one that I keep bringing up here, also the 2011 one had four. Those Turner Gill classes had 24 and 32 high school commits, respectively. You're doing this with 17 commits

Starting point is 00:08:01 in 2024, 15 commits in 2025. So the quality of players you're getting is at a premium compared to past classes that you've ever brought together for KU. And this class isn't as good as the class a season ago, but it still is one that when you stack them together, really adds a lot of talent that we haven't seen at a recruiting level from the high school level for a lot of years in Kansas's time. And OK, like, again, if we look at it, if we look at it this way, so if we go to top 1000, just top 1000 recruits on the 24 seven composite, the 2011 Gill class had 13, the 2024 Leipold class had nine of them, 2010 Gill class had eight of them, this year's Leipold's class, and then the 2014 Weiss class

Starting point is 00:08:42 had eight of them as well. But again, that 2011 Turner Gill class, it had 13 top 1000 recruits, but it had 32 total commits, which is the same number of the Lance Leipold commits the past two seasons combined. Things are different with the transfer portal, right? So if you compare it that way and say, okay, well, if we look at 32 commits over the last two seasons, then Lance Leipold would have 17 top 1,000 commits, trumping the previous high of the 24-7 sports era of 13, which they never have in Lawrence. Even if this one is a slight downgrade from last year's overall team class,

Starting point is 00:09:17 it still is an upgrade on where Kansas has been. And this is what I find interesting because of that, because you do wind up when you're comparing this class and last year's class to past classes at Kansas that have brought in 25, 30, 32 guys. What if we just go by the percentage of the player? So the as opposed to the quantity of player, we go by the quality of player, the percentage of the commits you have that are top 1000 commits. This one is actually better than last year. Fifty three point three% of the commits in this

Starting point is 00:09:46 year's class are top 1,000. Last year was 52.94%. The previous best high before those two years was 2023 Lance Leipold when 43% of the class that they brought in was top 1,000. Then before that, you have to go back to the Turner Gill classes. So that's three straight classes you've stacked up now that if you're just talking about the quality of player over quantity has been better than we've ever seen before at kansas during the 24-7 sports era which again goes back to 2010 now if you want to look at as opposed to just ranking because every class isn't made the same some years are better than the others what if we just look at it as grade so So on 24-7 sports, they have a grade composite of 0.8600 or higher. And I found that that ended up correlating a lot of times with some of the

Starting point is 00:10:30 better recruits, so to speak. Well, last year's class, 14 of the 17 commits were 0.8600 or higher. That meant over 82% of the class was that 0.8600 or higher, which is the best of the 24-7 recruiting era. This year's is second at 73.3%. The 2023 Leipold class is third at 64.3%. You know what's fourth on the list? The 2010 Gill class, only 33%. So that is the biggest number jump of them all. Again, 82% of the recruits in 2024 were 0.8600 or higher, 73% in this year's class, 64% in the 2023 class. The next highest of any KU class dating back to 2010 was only 33%. So they're stacking the other recruiting.

Starting point is 00:11:19 We know what Lance Leipold can do as a developer and as a program builder. That's a good place to be. All right, let's finish up. KU lost a couple transfers to the portal from the DB room. Former highly recruited guys themselves will talk about that on the other side. This episode is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. You're ready to tackle the NFL action with FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. Because right now, new customers can bet just $5 and get $150 in bonus bets if you win.

Starting point is 00:11:46 The 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. 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 and make every moment more with Fanduel, an official sportsbook partner of the NFL and the Locked On Podcast Network. All right, continuing on with this episode of Locked On Jayhawks,

Starting point is 00:12:19 finishing up some other news in the transfer portal. KU has lost two. Obviously, you're going to be expected to lose players all the time these players have been buried a little bit further on the depth chart and uh that would be caleb purdy as well as uh bj dillworth now both these guys were highly recruited in their class of 2022 but you look at it and the possible depth chart in 2025 um if you're viewing caleb purdy uh as a safety um you have both Dye brothers back for their final season Taylor Davis who got a ton of playing time at the end of this year

Starting point is 00:12:51 Mason Ellis will be redshirt junior and then you're still bringing in freshmen like Brandon Schmelzle and Darian Jones and this year's class Demonte Maxson took a redshirt so like you can understand that he's kind of buried on the depth chart chart as a redshirt junior. You know, he's he's obviously gone now from the corner room. OK, well, even though you lose Mello Dotson and Kobe Bryant, Demaryius McGee got a little bit of playing time early. He probably expects to be one of the top three corners next year. Jalen Todd certainly expects to be a starter after having a really good end to his freshman season. You have talent in there, which Kobe Davis and Jamil Croft and Andre Gibson and Austin Alexander. You're bringing in Chris McCorkle, their 2026 commit that they have as

Starting point is 00:13:29 a top 700 overall player. He's a corner. So like, again, he kind of gets buried on the depth chart as well. So you can understand why both players leave. I don't know that either was going to be projected to be on the two deep. Dilworth, if anybody, probably would have been the closest to it. But you look back at that class of 2022 now Dilworth was actually KU's highest rated commit by the 24-7 composite and then if you just look at 24-7 sports grade Purdy was their highest commit and that 2022 class has not turned into much for KU we just went over some of those recruiting numbers and you've heard us talking about 2023 2024 2025 you hope that none of those turn out like this 2022 class did

Starting point is 00:14:06 because you look at it, it's Purdy, it's Joey Baker, it's Dilworth, James Livingston, who, I mean, he's going to have a chance to help lead the class this year. He might be the starting tackle after you lose Logan Brown. Davion Westmoreland, who had a good season this year, but not for Kansas. He transferred away to HBCU and had a pretty good year there. Ethan Vasco, who transferred to Coastal Carolina. He's okay there Tristan Fletcher who's been you know I guess

Starting point is 00:14:29 uh is he going to crack the rotation next year as the linebacker Tevita Noah the one exception in this class that kind of worked out have been the the JUCO guys like Dean Miller had a good season this year Jalen Dye was a rotational guy for you Alex Reich had you know a few snaps here there and was solid enough in them. Mason Ellis was kind of the one high school recruit who has worked out to a certain extent, but it's not like he's been a starter. That is a rough class right now. They cannot afford to keep doing that at the high school level, obviously.

Starting point is 00:14:57 But you look at some of the recruiting rankings, and that one certainly doesn't measure up to the 23, 24, and 25 classes as well. I will say, at the very least, that year, even though the high school recruiting didn't turn out great, the transfer portal recruiting was a big checkmark. You got Kobe Baines, Dominic Pooney, Marvin Grant, Lonnie Phelps, Craig Young, Kalen Girvin, Savion Morrison, among others. So you hope that you can have a similar transfer portal class

Starting point is 00:15:21 to this year's team. That'll do it for this bonus episode. It went a little long here. I've locked on Jayhawks. We'll be back for a KU Creighton recap right here. Make sure you're subscribed to the show. See you then.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Tackle Logan Brown Declares for NFL Draft + National Signing Day Class Thoughts

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