Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - KU Football's Overhaul of Depth from 2021 to 2022

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

The Kansas Jayhawks football team has completely overhauled its amount of depth all over the field. How much will the improved depth matter for Lance Leipold and where are the biggest improvements?Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!LinkedInLinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at Linkedin.com/lockedoncollege Terms and conditions apply.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.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we dive into just how much deeper this KU team is filled up with depth this year as opposed to last year. I'm Derek Johnson. Thank you for joining me today on another edition of Locked on Jayhawks. You can hear me as well on Rock Chalk Sports Talk Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 on KLWN in Lawrence. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcasts. Today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks brought to you by BetOnline. BetOnline has you covered this season with more props, odds, and lines than ever before. BetOnline, where the game starts.

What we're going to be talking about today is looking at the complete overhaul into depth for the KU football team. And yes, the starters, the star players, who your sharding quarterback is, the all-conference guys, those are obviously of the utmost importance and the most important part of everything because you could have the best depth in the world, but if you have the deepest team in the country because you have five guys at every position who would be the second string at another school, it's not going to lead to those results.

So it's not the only thing, but certainly in football, when there are injuries, guys getting tired, guys just getting nicked up over the course of a game or a season, it is very important. And so KU last year just wasn't deep enough, point blank, right? You look at the quarterback position, maybe you were deep enough there. Like Jason Bean, Miles Kendrick might be the starter at New Mexico after transferring out of KU. Jalen Daniels was planning on redshirting until what happened at the end of last year.

So maybe you had enough bodies in the quarterback room. Running back room, though, you didn't. It's easy to look back now with how loaded the running back room is for KU this year with five legit guys, with three four-star guys in the system, and think that, yeah, it was this loaded last year. But it wasn't. Torrey Laughlin ended up moving over from receiver to running back because he didn't really have enough guys there.

Amore Pesic-Hickson was kind of injured through different points of the season, and then he obviously later on transferred away after the season finished. Velton Gardner, who was your original starting running back, he gets to a point where he's not playing as much as Devin Neal and not getting all the touches and carries he wants. He transfers away during the season. Daniel Hyshaw, out for the year before the season even started, they got to a point where at the end of the season, they were playing some non-scholarship guys at the running back position. So clearly that was a position that wasn't very deep. Fast forward to this year, Devin Neal, Kai Thomas, both guys who have put up big time production at the Power 5 level. Daniel Hyshaw comes back off of injury.

You have Torrey Loughlin, who again was kind of an emergency running back last year. Now he just provides more depth for you at that position. And then you have Savion Morrison, the four-star transfer coming in from Nebraska. So you have depth at that position that you didn't really have a season ago. Then you look to the receiver position. Receiver position is probably about the same last year but you do have because that's that's one of the biggest questions of the team overall you do have a lot of guys who maybe came in as freshmen or sophomore yet Kevin Terry who was out all last year because of injury even though there's not the for sure guy of last year you had Kwame Laster as your true number one target

there's that question of who that'll be this year but you could argue there's more depth in that room this year because some of those guys who redshirted are bringing in a Doug Emelian that there might be better, you know, number four, number five, number six on the roster than there was a season ago. Tight ends, obviously deeper than it was last year because last year until the end of the season, you didn't know what you had in Jared Casey. Now you do. That's a part of the full season as opposed to just the end of the season. Last year, Mason Fairchild and Trevor Cardell were working on some things in the blocking game. They just seem to be better this year. Will Huggins was dealing with injuries last season. He's back now this season, and he added Tevita Noah. That gives you five legit tight ends

that you can play in different formations, different situations. Last year, at different points, it was maybe two. And then once Casey came on, it was still two because Fairchild was injured at that point of the season. So you're more than double the depth that you got there. The one position on the offense that you didn't add depth to that you might actually have less depth is the offensive line. You have better starters, in theory, by returning all these guys. The depth is the

question, and so that is scary. But overall, you look at the rest of the positions, you added depth. Now you look over to the defensive side of the ball. Defensive line, you have five or six super seniors on the roster. You bring in Lonnie Phelps. Yes, you do lose a couple guys, but they have more depth. They have more playable guys, whether you're looking at the interior. You have Tommy Dunn and DJ Withers, who redshirted last year. They seem to be ready to maybe be part of the rotation if they can crack it above all those experienced players. Caleb Sampson, Caleb Taylor. You brought on Eddie Wilson and Ron McGee.

There's a lot of names that you feel comfortable that can at least be proficient in rotating in on the defensive line. You didn't always have that last year. You had a lot of unproven commodities. That is better this year. Linebacker last year was a struggle in terms of the starters. It was also a struggle in terms of the lack of depth. You didn't really have any other options where even when the starters were struggling to say, hey, we're going to throw you in and give you a chance. Like that led to Rich Miller getting a chance through a couple weeks into the season, but then you're kind of out of options there. This year, that's not the case. Like you're going, that doesn't even include Tristan Fletcher, the Juco guy. Those three guys would have probably been your best three linebackers a season ago.

But now you have improvement from Gavin Potter, from Rich Miller another year in the system, from both of them. We've heard all sorts of great reviews on Tywon Berryhill and the improvement that he has had at kind of the willed linebacker position for this team. They legit go too deep and maybe have even an extra guy beyond the too deep that you could feel comfortable in, which was not at all the case a season ago. So the linebacker depth has pretty much doubled

from where it was last year. Then you look in the secondary. Last year, KU was forced into playing all of these young players in the secondary. And the beauty of that is that now those players have experience and you added on these upperclassmen transfers with Montee McGarry and Kalon Girvin and Jarrett Paul and Marvin Grant at the safety position. And then you have all those guys back. And obviously, KU didn't lose anyone as part of their two deep in the transfer portal, so that helps with that too. And maybe that'll be something that they have to overcome

and deal with those hurdles in the future. But again, secondary is a lot deeper than it was last year. And you look at kick return, punt return. I don't know that they have the immediate guy that is going to fill in for what Callum Elassiter did as a punt returner, but they have a lot of options. Savion Morrison, Kenny Logan, Luke Grant, like you go on and on and on down the list. There are just more options for this team, which is great because, like I said,

if there are certain roles, if there are certain times when it behooves you to play a guy that does well at this than a guy that does well at that, you have those options, which you didn't always have last year. It also allows you to, this is something Bill Self says, sometimes the best teaching tool, the best motivation tool can be the bench. You're not playing well. You're not performing up to expectations. You're not trying as hard as I want you to, or you're not understanding the scheme enough. Okay, here, you're going to sit on the bench.

You're going to learn from it, and it's just going to make you want to get out there more and want to prove yourself even better and be a better competitor like you have that ability when you have more options and then it's just again you know you're going to deal with injuries you know guys are going to get tired you might be playing a team in the big 12 who runs hurry up offense plays up tempo and you're going to need multiple bodies that can sub into the game with fresh legs and maintain the level of what your starting defense should be. There is just so much more depth on this team that it should be able to weather the season a lot better than it did a year ago. How many wins does that

lead to a change? Does it lead to one or two more wins? I don't know, but certainly they're in a better shape to keep games more competitive as it goes on. How many times at the end of last season or through last season did KU have a game, Coastal Carolina, Baylor, where they were in it at half, they were maybe in it into the third quarter, and then they just got blown out the final quarter of the game? Happened a lot. I can't help but think a big part of that was the lack of depth on last year's team. That's something they don't really have to worry about on this year's team.

We're going to talk more about the depth of this team and hear from Lance Leipold. He spoke at KU Football Media Day earlier this week, headed into the season. We've also got to continue on with our top 10 questions that we're excited to get answered for the upcoming KU football season. But first, BetOnline.net is the fastest and easiest way to check in on all your betting needs. Find all your favorite sports and events at the number one online source for odds, lines, and games.

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to learn more about the action happening today. Got some preseason football coming up this weekend Not my thing to bet on it because I don't want to be betting on a bunch of backups, but it certainly makes the game more enjoyable, makes you want to tune in and watch those third stringers on your team. I don't know.

I'll just, I'll throw a blind bet on the Chiefs over the weekend. You just lost to the Bears, chomping at the bit for the backups to get back in and get a dub. Blind betting on the preseason. Not always the best idea. Let's have fun with it. Bet online where the game starts. Coming up, we will continue on with our series of the top 10 questions we're excited to get answered for the start of the KU football season.

We'll get into our number 6 question in just a little bit here. Wanted to talk more about the depth, though. So clearly Kansas has overhauled their depth. They've added a lot to all these different position groups and they should obviously be better for it. Here is Lance Leipold from earlier this week, had KU Football Media Day discussing that depth and the added bodies on this team. Back to yesterday's conversation, we started talking about guys. You know, we have a walk-on graduate transfer, and Andrew Russell, who came from Michigan. And Andrew was somebody we recruited at Buffalo and then didn't go on. He was a lacrosse player, went to Michigan to play lacrosse.

He was high school teammates with Mike Nowitzki. And he's played some special teams at Michigan. He gave up lacrosse and stuck to it. We have a guy like him competing. Right now he might be some backups on some teams. Those are some body types we just didn't have enough of last year. Talk about the linebackers as well. The amount of guys there. Donovan Gaines is another walk-on linebacker that's been big in teams. Dylan Downing. Again, you look at the two deep of the other

linebackers as well, it should be a more productive situation than where we're at a year ago. Same thing with all those running backs. They should be good special teams guys. It's not into the point where we have to save snaps because they're always on the field. We can can use a lot of these guys Torrey Lachlan Quentin Skinner have been some of our best special teams guys as well and one thing that is really interesting when you create a team that has a lot of depth is that you have to almost play this political game as a head coach where it's like well we still got to get these guys playing times that they're not upset and transfer away because we need to keep talent on the roster. And so it's kind of that balancing act between competition,

let the best guy play. But at the same point in time, especially at Kansas, where you have been so behind in the scholarship count, you don't want guys to leave who are part of the two deep or who are having roles on the team. the same point in time do you almost just say no screw it the competition will decide it and if the kids unhappy they're going to be unhappy there's nothing i'm going to do to quell that i'm in the game to win football games and i'm not going to worry about the other stuff because that it makes it kind of a difficult decision to go about and that's one thing that becomes interesting with all these transfers that KU adds on. So, like, one side of it is, of course, KU would add transfers. They need more talent. The other side of it is,

well, man, what's that going to do to the guys currently there? Is he going to be upset about it? And I think more so for the guys who maybe you already did bring on. Like, certainly, a lot of offseason talk about, hey, you just brought on Savion Morrison, this four-star transfer from Nebraska. Then a few weeks later, Kai Thomas decides to come to KU, and you bring him on via transfer. So it's not even as much about a guy like Daniel Hyshaw or a guy like Devin Neal who's like, hey, now there's more running back

competition in here. A guy like Savion Morrison who might be sitting there going, man, if I would have known Kai Thomas was going to come here, if I would have made my transfer decision after him, I wouldn't have come here because I wanted a bigger avenue for playing time. And is that going to hurt them in the future transfer portal, where a kid sees that and goes, yeah, but I don't want to commit here just yet as a transfer because you're going to grab somebody else, and then I'm going to have to deal with that.

But again, this all goes back to the same idea where it's like, okay, but these are Division I athletes. They're Power 5 athletes. Nothing is given to you, especially at Kansas, who is trying to turn this stuff around. You have to promote a bean of competition and you're almost just going to have to live with that type of, I don't know, negative end of the political game of playing the football field and everything just so that you can prosper on the field the most and that you might upset

some people, you might upset some players, but you're trying to get this thing turned around, and competition is a big part of that. So it's kind of an interesting balancing act, but again, even if you're having to deal with some of those negative parts of it, competition is the most important part of it. Here is Lance Leipold discussing that at KU Football Media Days earlier this week. Nobody got recruited over. Guys got recruited to help make this roster better.

I want to make sure we understand that. When those guys are recruited, they're coming in here to compete. Nobody was promised anything. Sometimes guys will go, you know, we're going to take so many players at each position. So we should get lesser players,

like guys that aren't as good as Kai Thomas because we have Daniel Heischar should we bring in another I mean you know premier programs of college football keep recruiting right and why would we do the same

but that honestly is that's part of the mentality we have to keep changing inside our program and outside our program because we have to keep bringing in players to compete and go about it if you don't like competition you know i don't know what power five football is for you or college football in general so i i've believed in that and i'll go back to being a division three coach and i kind of refer to that earlier people ask like that how do you sustain it it's pretty

simple we had a roster limit everybody paid for their own way it's all optional how much work do you want to put in to get it done well now we just move it up a bunch of notches here and if you don't want to compete that doesn't mean we don't believe in you. But you've got to be able to show that you can stay healthy, be dependable, reliable, and accountable to do the things we need to do. And what he said there about, so we should take lesser players, I think that especially rings true. Where it's like, well, we got Savion Morrison.

I know Kai Thomas wants to come here but I don't know that might upset the running back room let's take this player who we don't think is any good but we need another guy in the room so we'll just take him I think that was a great point by Lance Leipold and again you're not going to get to where you want to go without competition so it is a little different in college football nowadays where sometimes the competition can lead to players transferring away. But I guess you've got to kind of live on the line of if you're going to transfer away and you're not going to keep competing and if you lose out on this position battle and it's not going to burn a fire under your butt and allow you to maybe take it to the next level or keep battling through,

then there's nothing I can do for you. And good luck to you. We hope you go to your next destination and have success. But we're trying to find the right guys, both in terms of the culture who can create that competition and competition is going to allow us to have more success. And it's kind of that tough balancing act that at the end of the day, you want the competition the most that Lance Leipold is having to deal with.

In just a moment, we're going to continue on with our series of the top 10 questions we're excited to get answered for the KU football season. We move on to our number six question in just a moment. Our number six question, as we get on to our top 10 questions, we're excited to get answered for the KU football season here on Locked on Jayhawks. What will be the future effects of the transfer portal from this season? So this goes back to the conversation we were just having. You bring in a lot of talent.

I mean, a lot, a lot of talent. You add to the depth so much. Is there going to be more players who leave out of Kansas after this season? Because there is more depth. Because again, all the players KU lost into the transfer portal this offseason, none of them were on the two deep. And it's really just a couple guys who even had roles on last year's team, and a lot of them, if they did have roles, it didn't go super well.

And a majority of the players who did transfer away ended up at like FCS schools or a lot smaller schools that it makes you feel like, I mean, it's not great that you missed out on the evaluation of those players to begin with, which wasn't this staff's fault. It was the previous staff. But also it makes you feel a little bit better because it's not like they went to an Auburn or an Alabama where it's like, man, we had this kid who was good enough to play there.

Like Vanderbilt lost one of their starting offensive linemen. Now he's probably going to be a starter at Alabama. That probably doesn't feel great, right? But what happens if KU doesn't win much this season? What happens if KU goes 2-10 again or they go 1-11 or they lose the opener to Tennessee Tech and things aren't going well? Because it's easy to talk culture. It's easy to create that room of competition

and having everybody together when there's not a negative record on the board. But we know with Kansas, even if this is a successful season, Kansas could go 4-8, that's still a losing record. That's still more often on Saturdays that the team is not feeling great about the results of the game than they are the other way around, right? So how does that affect the psyche of these guys who come in from these winning programs and then have that happen? Does that have an effect on those guys wanting to transfer out again?

Or if some of the transfers don't really pan out, whether that's them just not having a great season or they just get beat out by returning guys for KU and some of the transfers who come in for maybe a final season or something don't get as big of a role, as big of playing time as they wanted. Does that affect KU being able to grab other impact players in the transfer portal who maybe have one year left, where they look at that past example and it's a talk among coaching circles or whoever that yeah you don't want to go there because

here's a couple examples of these guys they brought on it was their last year of college and they just didn't have a big enough role on the team so like there's there's a lot that goes in with the transfer portal here that this season could have a big effect on and the alternative of that I mean I'm talking mostly negative stuff here what about the positive side of this if this works out for Kansas I think of Michigan State last year right which you have the tie with Scott Aligo who comes over from Michigan State who was their like director of player personnel now he does that at KU essentially he's like a GM of the roster from a transfer portal standpoint of things and monitoring that and seeing guys that would fit and all that stuff.

And I don't say this to say KU is going to do what Michigan State did, which was go from being a team who struggled in the pandemic season to all of a sudden winning double-digit games last season. I'm not expecting that. But Michigan State made that big overhaul last year by hitting the transfer portal really, really hard. Kenneth Walker, their best player, who was a Heisman candidate all season long, he was a transfer from Wake Forest.

Now, again, I'm not saying that's as big of a turnaround KU is going to have, but the point being, in this day and age of college football, similar to what Fred Hoiberg did at Iowa State, bringing on all these transfers, or what Chris Beard has done, whether it was at Texas Tech or at Texas, and you have other college coaches in basketball and stuff doing this, where they've used the transfer portal really well to build teams that win each and every year, even if the transfers are new each and every year. And obviously there's varying degrees of success based on who you bring in, how well those players hit and everything. But that's my point. There are going to be teams

in college football who that's just their new thing. They're just building their backbone off of the transfer portal. And I think that's the case for KU. I think at some point, if you buoy yourself, you'll do better within state and overall recruiting of high school kids, then maybe it'll be less transfers you bring on. But in the near term, while you're trying to get up to that point where you win more games, what better way to do it than with this kind of unexplored avenue of the transfer portal, where if you can master that, that's an avenue for success. It's kind of like a money ball version of finding a different way to win because we're not getting the four and five star recruits. And these guys can come in with more college ready bodies and have that impact and everything so if it works on the other

end and KU does win four five six games and the transfers are playing a big role on the team and they're reaching out to their friends who enter the transfer portal and they're like man I don't know where to go and he's like trust me it worked out here so well you got to come here or other coaches or other players are seeing the success those guys have and the improvement of the program just overall as a whole. Then all of a sudden, the transfer portal could become something that is a huge boon to KU in the future. So this season is going to have a pretty heavy-handed impact

in terms of how KU operates with that portal and how much it helps or maybe even to a certain extent hurts KU moving forward. If you have much it helps or maybe even, to a certain extent, hurts KU moving forward. If you have anything you'd like for the show to talk about or want to follow along on the action, you can reach out at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter. Don't forget to subscribe to the show so you're getting all the latest with Locked on Jayhawks. That'll do it for today's episode.

Have a good rest of your day. Have a good weekend. Rock Chalk Sports Talk comes later today from 3 to 6. Till then, later.