Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - RUNNING BACK REVOLUTION: Kansas Jayhawks Football to UNLEASH Yasin Willis & Dylan Edwards in 2026

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Kansas Jayhawks could see Yasin Willis emerge as their next 1,000-yard back in Andy Kotelnicki’s offense. Derek Johnson spotlights Willis’ potent blend of power, speed, and patience, drawing comparisons to Daniel Hishaw and Le’Veon Bell, while identifying potential questions around Willis’ health and limited receiving abilities. The running back room, featuring Dylan Edwards and Jalen Dupree, is praised as KU’s deepest and most explosive position group this season. Switching to defense, Kansas’ revamped defensive tackle unit boasts disruptive playmakers like Blake Herold, Marcus Calvin, and transfer Tre'von McAlpine. Johnson breaks down key strengths—high tackle-for-loss potential and rotational depth—while also expressing concerns over run-stopping consistency and injury variables. Finally, Kansas’ status as one of the oldest teams in college football may give them a competitive edge; Johnson poses whether roster experience signals a path to another bowl game for the Jayhawks. Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!   Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. From the opening whistle to the final kick, Let There Be Goals on FanDuel. Visit https://FANDUEL.COM to get started now.   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) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You seen Willis can be the next 1,000 yard back in the Andy Coddlenicky offense. 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, and on today's episode of the show, we're going to talk about the oldness, the age, the wisdom of this KU football roster, and how it ranks very well. We're going to also get into the KU defensive tackle preview, and we'll start right here with a recent film review we did over Yassine Willis. So you can go find the full article. I'll put it in the comment section. It's on my substack, Jayhawks Overflow, where we did a little bit of a film review on Yacine Willis, the incoming running back for Kansas from Syracuse. Really powerful back, has a good bit of speed, really big body.

It has a good bit of production in his first two years at Syracuse. And the games I reviewed, 20, 25 games against Tennessee where he had 91 yards, three touchdowns, Duke, where he averaged almost six yards of carry. Clemson, where he had 94 rushing yards and 101 total yards. And Miami, who played for a national title, he had a solid 13 carry for 63 yard day in that one. And there were a lot of clips that I really liked. And the more I dig into this running back room for KU, the more that I absolutely love this running back room. I am a huge Jalen Dupree fan going back to the tape that I watched for him against Washington when he was at Colorado State. Obviously, he had to deal with an injury during spring ball.

So that was unfortunate there. Dylan Edwards, I think, is going to be set up for a lot of success in the Andy Coddle-Nicky offense and is so explosive. And you see Willis provides the pop. You know, you always hear it's overblown. We need a new nickname for, you know, when you have a power running back and a speed running back. You hear thunder and lightning. I don't know what we can think of for some other names. We need to think of a good nickname for Edwards and Yacine Willis

that isn't just a traditional thunder and lightning. But until we come up with that nickname, it is a thunder and lightning approach. And Willis really is the thunder to Edwards lightning, right? And I look at all these guys. And I'm like, and even like Coriomachry too, the incoming freshman. Like I loved what I saw on tape from him in high school

and sounds like he killed it during spring ball. This is an amazing running back room. I really do believe this is the best position group that KU has on the team this season is their running back room. But Willis kind of fits the bill as well here. When you're looking at it, like you can see the power on tape, whether it's a stiff arm, whether it's trucking a guy. You can see the physicality, difficult to bring down. You can see the speed. He has a good bit of, you know, explosive speed to be able to get up to his.

his top gear. I don't know that once he gets to his top gear, like he's not, he's not the biggest long strider in the world that has the best acceleration in the world, but he can get to his top gear and get to his top speed, I think, rather quickly, right? Some guys are more agile or more quick than they are fast. I think it's opposite for E. Seen Willis. He's more fast than he is quick. And again, so like I always think about it from like the, if you're playing called football 27 right there's a agility rating there's a speed rating there's an acceleration rating like willis is i don't actually know what they have him rated as but like if i was rating him um i think the acceleration might be more average the agility might be below average but the speed

would actually be good and then the power would be good which makes it for a very interesting combination but i think the other part of his game that i find very interesting is the patience to his game, right? Like a lot of times you would think of a guy who's a powerback just wants to go and smash guys face masks. That's not always the case for Willis. And honestly, if you remember how Laveon Bell used to run, the former, I guess, Michigan State to then Pittsburgh Steeler to then New York Jet, I guess Kansas City Chief running back was a very patient runner. He would get the ball and then he'd kind of dance around a little bit. It's not quite to that level. Like it's not to the full extreme on a scale of zero to Lavian Bell. It's not all the way to Lavian Bell, but it's certainly on

that side of the scale closer to being to Lavon Bell in terms of the patience and in terms of letting something develop. And he does it well to a point where, like, he's not dancing, but he's patient, lets the hole open. And then he uses that ability to get to his speed quickly with his size and his power. And he does a really good job to work north and south. And so you have this interesting blend of these three skills, the power, the speed and the patience that lead to him being, I would say, both a unique running back and a very successful running back at that. Now, the patience part of it means that you are going to be reliant on the offensive line, creating something for you or, you know, not getting cratered backwards because then you're going to lead to extra tackles for loss. So that does put extra pressure on the KU offensive line. I do think the KU offensive line is better set up as a run block.

offensive line, that a pass blocking offensive line. So I think that'll work okay. The other thing to kind of bring up here is, you know, as much as I came away from this feeling really good about you seeing Willis, the one big bugaboo here is not a good receiver. Like some bad drops, you can find that on the article that I posted. And that's kind of the big bugaboo here. But the beauty of it is by having other good running backs and by having specifically somebody like Dylan Edwards, who you would think is going to have a big hand in the receiving game from the running back position, you won't necessarily. need Yaseen Willis to come up with a bunch of catches throughout the season.

But I think when you watch Yacin Willis, you come up with, there's going to be a lot of comparisons made to Daniel Hyshaugh. I think it would more so be the Daniel Hyshaugh from 2022 pre-injury, where Hyshaa probably had a little more explosiveness and a little more speed. Like you think of the Duke highlight where he has that catch and gets in the open field, the spin move and ends up scoring the long touchdown. That's more of you've seen Willis, probably not quite as much power as high. Shaw, but maybe even honestly a little bit more speed than High Shaw, the prime Highshaw kind of had,

so to speak. I think that would be kind of a good mix of that and a little bit of Levyon Bell's running style. If he's anywhere near Leveon Bell in terms of production, that would obviously be a very good thing for Kansas. I think the big question here, though, is going to be health for Yacine Willis. And, you know, you look at it, he's dealt with some different injuries over the course of his first couple of years. And when you play to the physicality that Yacine Willis plays, even though he is a big back, 6-1, 235 pounds, he is set up to be able to take a toll, it still is going to take a toll on you. And so you look at his freshman season, it's hard to say, you know, was he banged up for any of it?

Because he's a freshman, he was playing. But you look at his sophomore season, his second year at Syracuse. And he ends up with 558 rushing yards on 4.3 yards per carry. But you're like, okay, why does a big back like that? Why is it only 129 carries? Well, Syracuse is running more of a kind of spread open passing offense. He's more of a powerback. So is it a fit thing?

But then you go look at the game logs and you're like, okay, he's, you know, not really playing after the North Carolina game on October 31st. And then he gets the Miami game on November 8th. And then it's no more games after that, right? And again, like that was a good game. It's not like a situation where in that Miami game, he fumbled four times or whatever. They still had two games after that. He had a good game.

He had 13 carry 63 yards against Miami. So clearly he was injured at the end of the season. I think he's had to deal with some different concussion things. And that's a little bit scary as a running back because you can easily get one of those concussions with the amount of contact you're taking. So I think if he does stay healthy and you get a full season of Yucine Willis, I think with the combination of Andy Codalnicki, who was the coach for Devin Neal having a couple thousand yard seasons at Kansas was the coach. for, I forget if it was KTron. I think Ketron Allen had over 1,000 last year for Penn State.

I think the year before both Allen and Singleton had over 1,000 yards for Penn State rushing. Cotoniki was the coordinator at Buffalo when they had some 1,000 yard rushers. Like, guys can get to 1,000 yards in the end of Kotelniki offense. And you've seen Willis would be my pick to do that if he can stay healthy with the combination of the KOLNiki offense, which is a combination of the KU offensive line, I think being good at run blocking with the combination of the fact that there are some questions at quarterback and the passing attack for KU.

So you are going to have to lean on that running game just a little bit more if you're Kansas. And I hope Willis can stay healthy because this dude is an absolute beast, and I think we'll be a thousand-yard rusher if he can do just that. All right, let's switch gears to the defensive side of the football. Preview the defensive tackle room for KU that next.

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Thanks to joining us on Lockdown Jayhawks. Let's get to our Kansas defensive tackle room preview. And thank you for the everydayers. we've already caught all of our other position room previews for KU. You can find them on our football playlist over on YouTube. But you look at the defensive tackle room, and I think this is a really exciting unit for KU coming into this season. I think it's a good combination of game wreckers.

What I mean by that are guys who can make those negative plays that can change the course of a drive or a game. You think of, you know, guys like Blake Herald and even Marcus Calvin showed some ability to do that last year. even smalls had a lot of you know kind of negative making plays or um halts where you are type of plays at uab a season ago is a good combination of that and guys who can allow k u to play different fronts so you know if you want to play a 3d tackle front um blake harold you know works as a basically you know defensive end in a 3-4 type scheme or where you have three defensive linemen

you have some guys like Trayvon McAlpine and Eamon Smalls who can give you a nose tackle look. You didn't really have the true nose tackle on your team a season ago. Now, part of that is dependent on health. And we'll get to that through the preview here. As you project the starting lineup here for this unit, I think Blake Harold is the obvious one. He'll be a fourth year player. So potentially could have two more years of Harold in a KU uniform. The other starter, if healthy, Trayvon McAlpine.

Now, McAlpine suffered an injury during spring ball. And there have been rumors that, you know, ranged from bad injury, going to miss all of the season to he'll be back at some point in the season to he'll be back at the start of the season. No idea exactly. We did see a picture posted recently of him doing some intense weightlifting. So maybe that's a good sign for where he's going to be at for the start of the season. And so that's kind of a big if with all this, both in terms of who the starters are, who's in the rotation, but also how good. this unit can be because McAlpine was brought in as a transfer from Tulane to be a run stuffer, to be a nose tackle, to be a really pivotal piece of this KU defense. Beyond that, if he doesn't

end up being the starter or the guys who were behind him, Eamon Smalls, fourth year player from UAB, had a lot of production over in Alabama, Birmingham. Again, another big, wide defensive tackle really liked his addition. He becomes even more important if McAlpine can't go. But regardless, he'll be somebody who plays a lot. And then Marcus Calvin, somebody who I think is being slept on a little bit here, just to jump ahead to my guy, that category. My guy is going to be Marcus Calvin in this group. Last year was Blake Harold for me, and it would probably still be Blake Harold again,

but that's not as fun of a pick. That's the easy pick. So we're going with Marcus Calvin. I really like the fact that he showed some flashes last year, had some big negative plays in kind of a more rotational role as like the 50 tackle for KU. And as the season was going on, it felt like he was getting more confident and getting more playing time. And I think he can have a, you know,

you see all these defensive tackle additions and you almost lose sight of Marcus Calvin having another year. I think he's going to have a solid season for KU this season. And we know that Jim Pantagos will play as many good ones as they have at defensive tackle will rotate in. You got four good ones, four will play. You got six good ones, six will play, right? So I feel good about those four.

After that is kind of the question of, are these guys going to be ready? So you have Jalen Atkins, who you brought in from the juke ranks. I think he's more so going to be depth, but who knows, maybe he shows himself to be just that. You have some of the youngsters you brought in recently. Neckwayne Carter is a true freshman, probably going to take a year to work on, you know, just adding weight and getting ready and everything. Tresia Hammond will be a second year player. Maybe he can crack the rotation, but those are the ones that I'm kind of viewing more as depth. The two big ones competing for,

can they get a spot in the rotation? And you're hoping that at least one does. It'd be great if both do. So, Jbreel Kande, who will be a fourth year player, former D2 player who had a breakout season a year ago at the Division 2 level. And he is a really athletic defensive tackle that I'm excited to see what KU can do with. KU's had success with some Division 2 transfers. The other one is Kevin Oatis, who's a second year player, transfer from Arkansas, was like a four-star recruit, came in with very high hopes. Kansas gets a shot at him. Now, again, to kind of jump ahead here, my best future piece from this group is probably Oatis. I think if you end up, you know, moving to 2027 or 2028, I think there's a chance Kevin Oadis could be an absolute stud for KU.

Can he be, you know, show the makings, at least in flashes of that this season in 2026, that would be super helpful to KU. But can at least one of those guys, Condé Aradis give you a five-man defensive tackle rotation? Because if McAlpine is hurt, that really would be a four-man defensive tackle rotation. And honestly, maybe you'd need both at that point in time. I do think the best player, though, is Blake Harold. Harold is a really good gap shooting defensive tackle, really good pass rusher from the defensive tackle spot, really good at creating negative plays.

He's already been really good in his first two seasons, red shirted and then two seasons of play. I'm excited what another year could look like. Could he be an all big 12 level player for KU this season? Now, the most important player, though, I think is Trayvon McAlpine. And specifically, it's Trayvon McAlpine's health. He unlocks so much of what this. Kansas defense can do. First of all, he's really good. He was an all AAC defensive tackle a season

ago for a team that made the college football playoff. Before that, he was a solid starter on Texas Tex defensive line. He's a good player. So that helps you, obviously. He's a really good run stopper. That helps you, obviously. But he also unlocks KU's ability to play a more traditional nose tackle, something they really haven't had on the roster in some of their recent years. And so not having him, you can play Eam and Smalls there, but now you're kind of out of depth of other guys who can do it. And McAlpine is, I think, just better at doing that than Smalls,

who again can play nose tackle, but it still maybe isn't Small's primary position where it kind of is with McAlpine. So McAlpine's health is going to be genormous for this season for KU. I think the biggest strength overall for this unit for Kansas is got to be the disruption. Like, this should be a unit that gets a bunch of tackles for loss.

When I say a bunch of sacks, in relation to other defensive tackles. Like, it's hard to get a lot of sacks as an interior defender because you're getting double-teamed all the time. Just in general, like the edge guys are going to end up with more of those. But relative to other interior defenders, defensive tackles, I do think Kansas should be a team that has a good amount of sacks and, you know, tackles for loss there. Blake Herald should get a bunch. I think Marcus Calvin has the ability to do it, even smalls. Like all those guys can be big-time disruption defensive.

tackles that aren't just, hey, I'm going to be this big run plugger. I'm going to take up two blocks and not, you know, take any movement backwards. But I'm also going to go forward. I'm going to shoot the gap. I'm going to tackle this guy behind the line of scrimmage. I think the biggest question, though, for this unit is how well overall can they stop the run? There will be some of those big tackles for loss. There will be some of those players where they shoot the gap and stop the run.

But specifically, if you don't have McAlpine, are you going to be a better, you know, chaos, creating defense, pass rushing defensive tackle group, then you are a run plugging, run stopping defensive line. That kind of is the big question there because you need to get better stopping the run. And I think the other big question here is just depth. Like if McAlpine again is injured, there's three guys that I feel good about right now, defensive tackle, and then you're just hoping Condi and Oatis are ready to go to give you a fourth and or fifth guy.

That's a little bit scary there when you're looking at. defense tackle. Now, again, maybe both of them work out. Maybe Adkins works out from the Juco ranks. Maybe, you know, cheese Hammond is ready to go. But that is kind of a question on paper because that's a spot where you don't want guys gassed. You don't want in the fourth quarter, you're throwing the same defensive tackle out there that you've thrown for 60 snaps because you don't have any other options and they're just gassed and now you're just getting run over every play in the fourth quarter or, you know, by the time the season continues later on the year, they're just gassed and like that's not a good position to be in so that'll be kind of the big

question for me is the depth overall better worse or the same compared to last year um i think they have a couple routes to being better than a season ago like keep in mind you've got you know some older defensive tackles there um with guys like tommy dj withers who are at least serviceable defensive tackles for k u but i'll say this if if blake harold steps up his game even another step forward, he would probably be in line to have the best defensive tackle season of the Lance Leipold era. I'm trying to think who else I would throw into that discussion. But I mean, it's at least like he would be as good as anybody up there, right? Now, the other route to getting it is McAlpine is healthy and playing up to the standard that you kind of expect from him coming in.

because if you have that with Harold and some of these other players, like I said, it helps the depth question. It helps the different fronts KU wants to play. It gives KU a mix of the gap shooters and the chaos makers with the guys that can just be stout versus the run. That's kind of the big one, right? Now, if McAlpine is hurt and the depth is a question, it could be a unit that at the beginning of the season, we say, is better than last year. But by the time the season ends, you know, and maybe it's more battered and bruised,

we say it's worse than a season ago. So I think there's a lot of ways this one can go. I am very high on some of the players. Just the depth kind of needs the hit for this one to hit on the season. All right, let's finish up. KU is an old man, and that's a good thing in college football. We'll get to that next. Derek Johnson with the year on Locked on Jayhawks.

Don't forget to check out all our episodes this week. We talked to a lot of KU basketball here. We're going to have an episode talking a little preview of the KU Arizona State game in London. as well, a little bonus for you throughout the weekend here. So KU is an older team, and that is a good thing in college football. This was sent out by, oh, gosh, was from RotoWire, who went and calculated the oldest teams based on average age in college football. And I was looking through, like, they said they were using, you know, recruiting class

to tell how old the player would be. So I do think there is a little bit of guessing here. Like it's, okay, if you're class of this, you should be this, years old when we know some guys end up being a little older, a little younger. So it's probably not a perfect, perfect thing, but in general, there's probably a lot of generality that this is pretty good here. So the oldest teams in college football, actually, funny enough, the top five teams are all group of five or whatever, non-power four, whatever it is now, non-power four teams up in the top five. The top power four team, if you're counting the pack, is the pack 12 still powerly? It'd be

power. There's no way it is at this point, right? Okay, we're not going to count the Pact 12. The highest ranks power four team right now is Oklahoma State, who is tied ninth in the country in average age, but again, number one among power four teams. Then you have to go to Cal in a number two, who's in the ACC, UCF, also in the Big 12, would be the third highest power 14. Then you have Michigan State, and then Colorado and Kansas are tied with Virginia for the next best. So if you're looking at just Power 5 specific teams, that means Colorado, Kansas, Virginia are tied fifth. Baylor's right behind them in terms of average age for Power 4 teams.

If you're talking nationally all teams, they're tied 16th in the country. Either way, that's a really good place to be. That means these are older teams. And I think it makes sense. When you think of what KU added in the portal, they added a lot of, you know, portal starts and players who are playing a lot of snaps and everything for their team a season ago. And it doesn't guarantee that you're going to have success.

But like I looked at last year, Indiana was one of the oldest teams in college football a season ago. They win the national championship. And like, yes, they had a lot of draft picks, guys who, you know, went on day one, day two of the draft or projected to go high in this next year's draft as well. Like, clearly had a lot of talent in addition to the experience. But Indiana wasn't as blue blood or as, I guess, what's the word I'm thinking of, you know, four or five star recruit heavy as some of the schools they were going up against in the playoff right but they still found a way not just win they were like dominating teams right and age is a big reason why i'm not saying kansas is going to be indiana from last year but clearly

there's a correlation between the older you are the better you're going to be able to perform on the field and i mean heck even miami miami who lost indian the title low key actually was slightly older in average age than indiana was so it absolutely is a you know, on average, the older your team is, the better they're probably going to do. So you look at that in your Kansas and you say, hey, that's a really good sign. Can we make it back to a bowl game? We are one of the more older teams in the country, you know? And so it is a good thing to be old, stay old in college sports and college football.

And it seems like Kansas was able to attain that this offseason with Lance Lightpole and company building the roster. All right. That'll know for this episode of Lockdown, Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get podcast, including on our YouTube page. where you can like and subscribe to the show. I'll see you next time for another edition of LOJ.