Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - QUINCY DAVIS = JAYHAWK | Kansas Bolsters Linebacker Room, But is More Still Needed at LB?

Starting point is 00:00:00 K, you got one of the most sure tacklers at the linebacker position in the transfer portal. Quincy Davis is a Jayhawk. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What's going on, Derek Johnson here? This is Locked on Jayhawks. A little bonus episode for you here. More commits coming via the transfer.

Starting point is 00:00:30 portal for KU football. Quincy Davis, who has an insane mistackle right in a positive way for KU is the latest. We're going to break it all down on today's episode of the show. Thank you for making locked on the number one sports podcast network. And thank you for joining us on LOJ. Thank you every day or is catching each and every episode of the show. So we're going to get into the news here. What exactly Quincy Davis brings to the table, his scouting report. And we'll also get into more on the position room and breaking that down for KU football with what the linebacker room looks like now for KU. Davis actually one of three linebacker commits for KU now at this point in time, one of two on Monday. So a little more

Starting point is 00:01:05 full in the linebacker room now than it was when the portal first opened up. So Davis just picked KU after a recent visit. He was visiting KU over the weekend. He's a six foot one, 230 pound linebacker from Las Vegas, who spent three seasons, one of them redshirting at New Mexico State. That means he's going to be a redshirt junior with two years of play for Kansas. And so this continues due to replenish to fill the linebacker room for KU. I don't think that they have replaced the level of player that Trey Lathen is, at least yet. I don't know that they've even replaced anybody as good as like Joseph Sip theoretically. I guess you don't know how he's going to come off the injury or Bengali Kamara.

Starting point is 00:01:50 But KU needed bodies here and they needed to take some upside swings. And I think you're able to do that with a guy like Quincy Davis and add him to the linebacker room where there is some upside. some interesting things that I like about his game. So let's get into that coming up next as well as what this means, what the linebacker room looks like on LOJ. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Rocket Money. Let's be real. Managing your finances can feel overwhelming between subscriptions you forgot about,

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Starting point is 00:03:10 Thanks again for joining us here on Locked on Jayhawks. A little bonus episode, Quincy Davis is the newest Kansas Jayhawk. He's a transfer from New Mexico State. So redshirted in 2023. He then goes up to 19 tackles in 2024 and then had his biggest season this year in 2025 goes from 199 to 314 snaps logging 42 tackles. He had one tackle for loss and then includes a 10 tackle game that he had against rival New Mexico, who was a really good team this year. And interestingly enough, like pro football focus actually credits him with 47 tackles this

Starting point is 00:03:45 year, which I find interesting from the standpoint of a lot of times like, I don't know, sometimes the people doing the stats, like tackles can get overinflated by. the school to help all conference candidates here or whatever usually the ones you see on like the sites like pro football focus which are like checking the film twice so to speak um or it's going to have a lower tackle count it actually is higher here so actually a little better there but he was basically a third linebacker from new mexico state which you might be thinking okay you're only a third linebacker for a four and eight you know non power four team wise kansas kicking the tires here you can't just look at it that way because first of all new mexico state like

Starting point is 00:04:26 randomly was really good at the linebacker position this year. They had three of the 16 highest graded linebackers on Pro Football Focus in the conference USA. It's three of the top 16. So it makes the competition a little more difficult there. And even though they were a four and eight team, it's because their offense wasn't very good. They were 103rd in the country in EPA per play, but they had a really good defense. New Mexico State was 27th nationally in EPA per play defensively. So you had a really good defense.

Starting point is 00:04:54 You had a player who produced on a really good defense. defense. And pro football focus really liked the game of Quincy Davis here. He was somebody who had a 73.2 pro football focus grade. That's a really solid number. 80.6 in run defense. Big reason why is that he was a tackling machine when it got to him. 89.8 tackling grade didn't miss many tackles. And he also was a solid coverage linebacker too, 66.5 coverage grade for a linebacker. He actually finished top 10 among conference USA linebackers in overall pro football focus great. And so if he can even carry over or even like remotely be similar to what his mistackle rate was at New Mexico State to a bigger, more athletic, you know, speedier level at the

Starting point is 00:05:40 Big 12 than was in the conference USA, he's going to be okay. He had a 2.1% mistackle rate. That is insane. Now, again, it's not coming with 90 tackles. So it's not the biggest sample size, but it's still not a small sample size. Again, he played 314 snaps. If that number doubles, it'd still be an elite number for KU. That number could triple and it'd still be a really good number for KU. It could quadruple. It'd still be a fine number, right? So even if it gets a little worse than it was, that sure hand tackling, if he can be anywhere even near to that same level would be a huge boon to KU. Now, on the coverage side of things, one of the things that sticks out to me is that you look at some of the times he was targeted.

Starting point is 00:06:24 He gave up 14 catches on 16 targets, which sounds like a big number because that's a high completion percentage, right, on a decent amount of yards per target. But the thing is that it's still not that big of a target number. Sometimes as a linebacker, you can just, okay, the check down to the running back, you're getting credited with covering that guy. The thing that's interesting to me with the coverage,

Starting point is 00:06:47 I mean, first of all, the coverage grade was solid enough. the most snaps that he logged on the field were coverage snaps, which tells me his coaching staff that his team viewed and trusted him to cover from the linebacker position. And that's something nice that when you look at, I mean, Kansas needs to get better at everything on defense. They need to be better against the run. They need to be better against the pass.

Starting point is 00:07:11 It's everything. They need force more turnovers. But certainly, we know Kansas struggled in past coverage and having a linebacker who was trusted by previous staff to be coverage, right? I think that's a good thing. Now, one thing I am a little worried about here, just one tackle for loss in over 500 career snaps. That's not a lot of negative production. And what does that translate over to at a higher level? Maybe that was just more about what he was being asked to do, though. In scheme, he also does have to adjust in level, though. That's

Starting point is 00:07:39 going to be a big question here. And then there's the question of how it does scale up and roll. You know, not just are you going to a higher level, but what if you go from 300 snaps to 400, right? You have the same level of productivity in there. And I will say, like, we saw Kansas be able to scale up Rich Miller from a lower level and lower snaps into being a starting linebacker for KU. And I guess it's better to ball out and have questions of scaling up than the alternative here. And there's a chance to he was about to be a monster in 2026 for New Mexico State. So maybe you're getting on the ground floor of this. If it happens, I do like the ability to potentially be a three-down backer if it all comes together because of the coverage

Starting point is 00:08:21 ability. I think this is a good swing for KU in terms of some of the potential skills he has to see if they can translate to your defense in the Big 12 level. So what does this look like for the linebacker room for KU? What's the projected role we get to that next? Thanks for joining us on this episode, Locked on Jayhawks. Don't forget to check out our everyday air club as well. And don't forget you can check out all of our other commitment episodes. We talked about KU's newest running back, Jalen Dupree, about the newest office lineman, Connor Stroh, some of their linebackers as well. So check those all out anywhere you get your podcast and on Locked on Jayhawks.

Starting point is 00:08:56 So the linebacker room is coming together now for KU. They now have six scholarship linebackers, which I don't know how much more are they going to go on that. Are they going to add one more or are they done in this area? Landon Watson was the first commit. He's kind of the old guy in the room, the sixth year. senior from most recently Kentucky before that Marshall you've got a couple of freshmen in there Malachi curvey Joseph Credit Josh Galbraith in there if you want to count him as a linebacker and

Starting point is 00:09:23 again I'll be interested to see what the role of him is going to be and then you have Quincy Davis as a Richard Jr. from New Mexico State and then they just brought on another transfer edition from South Carolina in the linebacker and check out that video as well to kind of talk about that it's an interesting group and one that honestly right now if I was picking among what is there. The betting favorites, what I would predict to be the starting linebackers, at this point in time, I would predict to be Landon Watson and Quincy Davis. Now, we'll see again, okay, you have another addition in there. That'll be kind of interesting here, but I do think this is a position group for KU that I don't think it's better than it was a season ago. They still, to me, need to go

Starting point is 00:10:09 out and try to add another stud, but maybe this is a position. They're not going to do that. Maybe this is a position where they're prioritizing and saying, hey, we had a lot of athleticism at this position last year with Trey Lath and a Mangali Kamara. And there were some really good moments and some really good plays, but there were a lot of inconsistencies from the defense and filling running lanes and linebackers and defensive linemen, not really being on the same page and defending the running game sometimes. And maybe their thought process is, hey, let's get guys we can trust who are coachable, who are well liked by their coaching staffs that we feel like can follow our scheme to a T, and even if it's not as athletic, if we're doing our fundamentals and things

Starting point is 00:10:46 we want to do schematically, you know, maybe it limits your ceiling as a defense, but can the floor be higher than it was a season ago? So maybe that's kind of some of the idea here for KU. But yeah, for me right now, it's a wait and see. Are they going to add more in the portal, but with three portal additions already a linebacker, maybe they are going to be done. And if they are done at this point in time, to me, I would probably expect Davis to be one of starters. But again, we'll wait and see. Still a lot of time left in the portal. and still a lot of openings for KU. They've got over 20 openings so left at this point in time.

Starting point is 00:11:15 All right, that'll do it for this episode of the show. You can find our episodes anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. Don't forget to check out all of our other commitment videos talking about some of the ones from Sunday night. We've also got many others from Monday, including Geron Willis, the other linebacker that KU brought in from South Carolina. We also broke down an episode talking about some of the other portal commits for KU,

Starting point is 00:11:37 such as getting a safety from Miami and Georgia and Jaden Harris. So check out all those anywhere you get your shows with Locked on Jayhawks and see you next time on LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - QUINCY DAVIS = JAYHAWK | Kansas Bolsters Linebacker Room, But is More Still Needed at LB?

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