Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Underrated? What Latest Rankings Tell Us About Kansas Jayhawks Football 97 Days Out From 2024 Season

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, ESPN SP Plus has been updated. What it tells us about the Kansas Jayhawks. Are they a little bit underrated this season? You are locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can give me a follow on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. You can find the show here with Locked On Jayhawks

Starting point is 00:00:32 anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. And on today's edition of Locked On Jayhawks, we have another KU Football Friday. The latest ESPN SP Plus is out. What it tells us about Kansas offensively, defensively, special teams, where they need to get better if they're going to win the Big 12. Are they a little bit underrated?

Starting point is 00:00:50 We're also 97 days out from the KU Football season opener against Lindenwood. So we'll get into that and what the number 97 signifies. And then who's going to be the most underrated players for KU when the ratings come out, when the rosters come out, when the game comes out, when the rosters come out, when the game comes out for college football 25. First, this episode of the show is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase with GameTime terms apply. So let's start right there. What the new ESPN SP Plus

Starting point is 00:01:22 rankings say about Kansas. If you new to what ESPN SP plus it's basically the big metric the Ken Palm of college football so to speak there are other ones in college football but it's good work from Bill Connolly over at ESPN and Kansas comes in at number 37 in the updated SP plus rankings which these have been updated from they have the preseason rankings but now that we've had spring that we've had spring ball, we've had some player movement, we've had some transfers, and all sort of that stuff that it has a little bit of a change on that. So Kansas coming in at 37th on the ESPN SP+, which doesn't sound – you look at some of these way too early top 25s,

Starting point is 00:01:58 you're seeing Kansas pop up ranked in some of them to where this is a little bit lower on that. And so I think they are being under is a little bit lower on that and so i think they are being underrated a little bit by that metric now are they going to be up uh underrated by every metric no and i do think it is important that um you take a look under the hood of what the metric is and it utilizes history, which I understand why, because history typically is a good predictor. And yes, at the end of the day, it's not fully indicative of this team.

Starting point is 00:02:31 And there are teams all the time that buck the trend of what their teams did the last year, the last three years, or whatever it is. But over the long haul, you're going to bet with the streak. So you can understand why history can be a good predictor for these things that we have a lot of cyclical stuff. It doesn't apply as well for Kansas, though, for a lot of reasons. One, they've had this big turnaround. Two, you had a completely different coach.

Starting point is 00:02:54 If you're talking about going back four years, you're talking 2020 less miles team that went 0-9 would have been the first year. Then year two would have been 2021 with Lance Leipold, which was kind of year zero there. So that's going to drag down your rating. And so I'd be curious to know if this was just based off, you know, the last two years or something, where would Kansas come in this? Would they be top 25? Would they be top 20? And again, I think overall you understand why that, that I guess piece is in the, the model because overall it probably is very helpful. But for Kansas, it's not as much as. So you might look at it and see Kansas 37th and think they're

Starting point is 00:03:33 underrated. I think they would be underrated by that notion, but that would be why to me. Because for instance, last season they finished 25th overall. By the time the season comes to a close, it starts to filter out those past years of data, just like as the season will go on, it'll slowly filter out those past seasons of data. And the older the season has, you know, I imagine a smaller weight on everything. So point being last year, if you just view it this way, they finished 25th last season and they bring so much back from last year's team. So many important pieces from last year's team that that would be the jumping off the way to me to be like, yes, they should be a top 25, top 20 team. What else

Starting point is 00:04:09 does it say? Well, it says they're 19th in the country on offense in the preseason. Out of comparison, they finished eighth in 2022. They finished 17th in 2023 in that same metric. So this actually has them below both those numbers. But again, the first two years of 2020 and 2021 are weighing them down because I think realistically you would say, okay, well, let's look at the floor as being last year. Then again, you could say if Jalen Daniels isn't healthy, then the floor does kind of go out the window. But I think with a healthy Jalen Daniels, if you're talking, they were eighth in 2022 and they're 17th in 2023 now they're 19th of preseason there's no reason with a healthy Jalen Daniels why they can't be a top five to ten offense in the country on ESPN SP plus if you don't have a healthy Jalen Daniels if he does get injured

Starting point is 00:04:55 that's where the floor becomes a lot different because you had top 20 offenses the last two years with Andy Kotelnicki but that's a little less concerning to me and with Jason Bean being, being able to come in as backup quarterback. Now, Isaiah Marshall has all sorts of talent in the world. Cole Ballard has another year under his belt, but how comfortable are you going to feel that one of those two is going to keep you as a top 20 offense? Because as much as Cole Ballard filled in admirably last year and what he was asked to do as third string quarterback, who up until midway through the season was a walk-on true freshman the offense wasn't great with him in there right I mean you think of the Texas Tech game that was a slog for the KU offense certainly and the Kansas State game unable to score over the last quarter and a half of play so yeah I think with Jalen Daniels sky's the limit but without

Starting point is 00:05:38 it probably lower floor than last year's team the defense side side of the ball, it has them right now 66th on defense for 2024. So you go back to 2022, they were 109th. You go back to last year, they were 62nd. So actually, I would say that this one is about in line with kind of where I would expect about nationally average. You could really argue that the defense will be better this year than it was last year. You could argue it will be worse this year than it was last year. Here's the arguments for both. If you want to argue that the defense will be better this year than it was last year, you would say the linebacking core is going to be better. Cornell Wheeler and J.B. Brown were probably KU's two most talented best linebackers a season ago, but because of seniority and stuff like that, you were playing some other guys.

Starting point is 00:06:23 Now they're going to get a bigger role on the team, and they can take another jump from where they already were. Okay, so you're going to get better at linebacker. The DBs are all back intact, minus Kenny Logan. But you have even, in my opinion, more depth than you did last season in the secondary. Kobe Bryant, Melo Dotson, what if they take another jump to being, you know, from all Big 12 to All-American? You could argue the DBs are just as good, if not better.

Starting point is 00:06:43 You could argue that defensive tackle has an opportunity to be just as good. Now, that could be a little difficult because you lost Gage Keyes to transfer, and he probably would have ended up being one of your starters, and that was after already graduating guys like Devin Phillips, who was a really underrated piece of the defensive line a season ago. But you could make the argument that they have about five deep there. Tommy Dunn and DJ Withers already have made jumps each and every year in their collegiate career. What if they make another jump this year, right?

Starting point is 00:07:09 You brought in Javier Derrett, who's a very experienced defensive tackle. Keenan Caldwell, Caleb Taylor's played a lot of ball, and he seems to be in his best kind of state in terms of physical body and everything like that. So you could argue that you're going to get about the same production of the defense tackle. It's hard to argue that you're going to get the same production of defensive end. But if you're arguing it's going to be better, you would say, OK, but the combination of by Job and the two freshmen with Brinkley and Warner coming in and adding Dylan Woodkey in addition to bringing back Jeremy Robinson, that's going to aggregate in part enough like everybody's going to pitch in a little bit there that's going to add

Starting point is 00:07:45 up to Austin Booker right so that's how you would say it's going to be better and also you would just say another year in the system under Brian Borland okay so that could very well happen you could also say it's going to be worse you could say that okay well what if the linebackers aren't better what if it's the same from all the graduations what if loss of Kenny Logan is tough to overcome what What if not having Austin Booker? What if you just don't have that pass rusher? What if the defense tackles aren't up to snuff to where they were last year, right? You could easily say it's going to be better or about worse. So maybe it's just best to assume they're going to be about the same. So that makes

Starting point is 00:08:17 this range kind of make sense. But it also means for Kansas to be a better team. You have to get better at something, right? If we look at it from this standpoint, Kansas finished 25th in the country on ESPN SP Plus last season. They were 9-4 overall in the year. If you're talking about being a Big 12 title contender, if you're talking about taking a step to being a 10-win team, an 11-win team, whatever that is, you have to get better at some things, right? Okay, could the offense go from finishing ranked 17th last year to finishing 6th? Yes, of course, that could happen. But how much of a difference would that lead to? Is that one win over the course of the season?

Starting point is 00:08:49 I don't know that that's like a three-win difference, but maybe that's one win. But the biggest jumps to me, the biggest room you have to grow are on defense. Can you go from being the 62nd best defense last year to being the 40th? Can you go to being 35th, right? Like that would be a huge jump for this team

Starting point is 00:09:04 that could lead to, I don't know, a know two win swing or something like that um and then also special teams which let's get into that they are 60th on special teams coming into the year which is what they finished in 2023 they're only 128th in 2022 how much can you improve and while the defense there feels like maybe there's a cap there, like could the defense get better? Yes. Is this all of a sudden probably going to be like a top 20 defense in the country? That would very much surprise me. Whereas with special teams, there's no reason you can't go from being the 60th best special teams to being a top 20 special teams in the country. Like, I don't know that it's going to happen. And I think there's some unsettlement with the kicker position and some of the things that are going on there, but like there there's nothing inherently that

Starting point is 00:09:49 prevents you from doing that year over year. Like, I don't know. I think you can improve. And that's where I'm kind of looking at it. Can you be like a top 15, top 10 offense? Can you be maybe top 50 where there's some improvement on defense? And can you spike up that special teams that maybe that could swing a game in the positive for you uh some other things that the esp and sp plus tells us the schedule here's uh quickly running through who they play at illinois not counting the lindenwood game they're 66th versus unlv they're 71st at west virginia who's 34th tcu at home they're 36th at arizona state's 88th so that's the lowest ranked team you'll play on the SP plus preseason. Houston 79th.

Starting point is 00:10:26 That would actually be the second lowest. But again, like I said earlier, I trust Willie Fritz to get that thing figured out. At Kansas State, who's 17th. That's the strongest team you play based on these ratings. Iowa State's at 30th. BYU is 67th. Colorado 69th and Baylor 61st. That is a pretty manageable schedule.

Starting point is 00:10:43 But also every one of those teams could be good enough to make a bowl game in the right situation. So it's not an easy schedule, but it's not the hardest schedule in the world either. And if you're looking at the top Big 12 competition by the ESPN SP Plus, well, Texas and OU, they're gone. They would have been top two. They're fourth and 15th.

Starting point is 00:11:01 K-State's at 17th. Utah's at 18th. Oklahoma State's at 20th. Arizona's at 24th. Iowa State at 30th. West Virginia 15th. K-State's at 17th. Utah's at 18th. Oklahoma State's at 20th. Arizona's at 24th. Iowa State at 30th. West Virginia 34th. TCU 36th. Kansas is 37th. So again, going back to the underrated idea here by the ESPN SP Plus, that would have Kansas finishing, what, eighth in the Big 12 this season? I would definitely think they finish even better than that. But again, if we're going off last year's SB Plus ranking for them, then that would put them in the top five with K-State, Utah,

Starting point is 00:11:28 Oklahoma State, and Arizona. Let's continue on. We're 97 days out from KU football. What that number signifies on this episode of LOJ. First, we are brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. It's winner-take-all time in the NBA and NHL. Charles Schwab tournament's going on. You can get in on futures for college football, for the NFL coming up.

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Starting point is 00:12:28 home run. You get a bunch of bonus bets for every home run that's hit in the game. So visit Fanduel.com slash LockedOn and make every playoff shot count. Fanduel, America's number one sportsbook. All right, continuing on, we're 97 days out. We had the episode earlier this week. Thank you to the everydayers tuning in to that one about being 100 days out from KU football. we're 97 days out. We had the episode earlier this week. Thank you to the everydayers tuning in to that one

Starting point is 00:12:45 about being 100 days out from KU football. So now 97 days out. So what does that number signify? Well, number 97 is Keenan Caldwell. I was talking about the defensive tackles earlier, and I think Caldwell becomes an interesting name here. He has 30 career games played, 17 total tackles, hasn't ever made like a gigantic impact on one specific game or season,

Starting point is 00:13:04 but he's rotated in at least enough he played 140 snaps last season graded out as a 56 on pro football focus he's gonna become more relied upon this year without phillips keys and company and he's still not expected to be like a starter or anything like that like still probably the fifth defensive tackle behind uh i guess tommy dunn dj withers javier Derrick and Caleb Sampson I don't know which of those two are going to end up starting feels like those four kind of on a tier by themselves but then Caldwell is right behind it and I think Caldwell is maybe more of like defensive tackle six last year so if you played 140 snaps there maybe that means this year you get 200 250 something like

Starting point is 00:13:43 that kind of depending on what happens in front of you with injuries and guys get worn down. But we know that Jim Panagos and Brian Borland and Lance Leipold, they're going to rotate players if they're good enough to play, especially on that defensive line. They're going to keep guys fresh. They're going to get a lot of guys playing time. And so I'm interested to see if Keenan Caldwell can make a jump and just as a whole, that entire defensive tackle unit, because like I said, you do lose some pivotal players there, but you could make the argument that, okay, Tommy Dunn, DJ Withers, take another step forward.

Starting point is 00:14:14 They went from taking a step forward of growing their bodies in their first couple of years to then being able to rotate in to then making the jump to being starters or starting some games last year for KU. Can you now make the jump from being starter to being a really good player, right? And could that happen, the experience of Derrick and Sampson? We'll see. I could see this end up being a underrated position unit for KU, but it's on guys like Caldwell and Sampson

Starting point is 00:14:38 and some of these guys who have been in the program for KU to kind of have career years. The other 97 number I wanted to discuss is we're 97 days away from KU Lindenwood. Devin Neal had 1,497 yards from scrimmage last season. So nearly 1,500 yards from scrimmage. If I set 1,500 as the over-under, what would you take? Now, it'd be easy to say, okay, that's basically what he had last year. Another year better. Of course, I'm going over there.

Starting point is 00:15:06 But you do have to take into account that you never know what's going to happen with injury, knock on wood there, that nothing bad happens, and that what happens if Daniel Hyshaw looks back to the guy that was pre-injury, Harry Stewart, what if he's just so good that you have to give him touches? What if the staff's trying to keep him fresh for the back half of the season, uh, as a possible big 12 title contender. And so, um, I think it becomes an interesting number. I would definitely go over on it for me personally. I think he's going to have a really, really special year. And I think the way that he separated himself from Daniel Hyshaw over the past half of the season last year,

Starting point is 00:15:42 cause Hyshaw is still a really good running back. But I thought while it was kind of a 1A, 1B between the two of them, especially before Hyshaw's injury a couple of years ago, over the back half of last season, like Devin Neal really elevated from being like a really good player to being like, okay, that kid's going to be one of the top NFL draft running backs taken out of the match in 2025. And he should vie for like all American honors this

Starting point is 00:16:06 year because Kansas is going to be good and he should be able to put up some really big stats. So I would be taking over on that. And I think what becomes an interesting question is how many would he need to be a Heisman candidate? Now the word Heisman candidate, it can be kind of a, it's not a defined thing. Like if you finish eighth in the Heisman, you weren't like, it doesn't feel like you would be in those conversations. If you finish eighth in the Heisman that the last two weeks of the season, everybody's like, who do you got in the Heisman? And everybody's bringing up this guy that like, you're, you're not really in those debates. You probably just finished eighth. Cause a couple of people voted you third and didn't have you winning the Heisman or something

Starting point is 00:16:40 like that. So does that really count? Then again, if you finish top 10 in Heisman, that is Heisman talk and Heisman candidacy. Are you talking to somebody who gets invited? Whatever. Let's just put it as like Heisman top 10. So Ollie Gordon had over 2000 yards last season for Oklahoma state. He finished in the top 10 Cody Schrader for Missouri. He had nearly 1900 yards top 10. And then Blake Corum had almost 1400. But that's a little bit different. He had a ton of touchdowns and he was Corum had almost 1,400, but that's a little bit different. He had a ton of touchdowns, and he was on the best team in the country, which that's just going to inherently boost your stock and everything. Kansas does have the one thing going for them when you're talking Heisman race

Starting point is 00:17:15 that, like, I would say certain guys end up getting, like, an RG3 at Baylor. This story, this narrative behind it of, hey, this team used to be so bad and these guys have lifted up this program. And so a nine and three season, a 10 and two season at Kansas gets almost graded on a curve, like to a positive level that if you go nine and three, 10 and two at Alabama or Georgia, where the expectations are off the charts, it's like, you're not in the Heisman race, but you do that at Kansas. And it's like, look what this guy did. Look what they were before he entered the program. Look what they just did. This guy's one of the best players in the country for doing that. Right. And it does make some sense

Starting point is 00:17:57 when you kind of put it that way. But realistically, if KU does like win the big 12 or at least wins, you know wins 10-ish games, I think 1,700 yards for Devin Neal, like total yards, 1,800 yards with a lot of touchdowns. If you're in the Big 12 title contention, winning double-digit games, being ranked in the top 15, 20 of the country, maybe like 1,700 total yards by the end of the regular season, like that gets you top 10. And if you are in the Big 12 title game and you are closer to that 2,000-yard mark,

Starting point is 00:18:29 I mean, Ollie Gordon didn't finish in the top five. I think he was sixth. But that gives you a shot based on the rest of the candidates that year of getting invited to New York, which I think is doable here. So we'll see if that ends up happening. That would be very, very cool. All right, let's continue on here with this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. Who's going to wind up being KU's most underrated player, sticking with that theme, in the new College Football 25 video game coming out in July?

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Starting point is 00:20:24 College Football 25 is going to be coming out in a couple months, less than two months at the middle point of July. And it'll be interesting to see where KU players are rated in the game. I am not going to have the conversation of who's going to be the highest rated players on KU. I think you can probably figure those out. And I know even like Michael Swain with Fog.net did a good article talking about that. So you can check that out over there with who he expects to be kind of the highest rated players in the game.

Starting point is 00:20:52 I want to talk about who I think is going to be the most underrated players in the game because there inherently will be somebody or probably a couple of players that come out in the game. And it's like, they're only a 78. They're only like an 81 or something. I thought there would have been like an 89 or a 90 or something. so I want to talk about those guys because obviously like Jalen Daniels gonna be ranked high Kobe Bryant's gonna be ranked high right like Devin Neal's gonna be ranked high right so who are gonna be the underrated players for KU I could 100% see Luke Grimm and or Quentin Skinner being uh underrated like I think LJ Arnold I could see him having a high rating but then again you could argue that all of KU's receivers could end up being underrated because

Starting point is 00:21:28 you look at the raw stats based on the fact that they had so many targets that they would throw to that they ran the ball a lot, all that stuff that they're not going to pop up as like mid eighties or whatever it ends up being. And maybe they get underrated a little bit there. I think that would be kind of interesting. But especially with like Luke Grimm, because Luke Grimm up until the bowl game was not putting up like gigantic stats last season. And again, there's a reason it's not that he's like not a good player. Luke Grimm's a very good player. It's just that Luke Grimm had to deal with injuries last year. He was banged up several games, even in ones that he was playing. He had to share targets with LJ Arnold and Quentin Skinner, two other good receivers. He had to share targets with LJ Arnold and Quentin Skinner, two other good receivers. He had to share targets with really three good tight ends.

Starting point is 00:22:08 He had to share targets with the running backs. He had to share with all the runs that KU had, whether it's quarterback runs, running back runs, right? But 33 catches for Luke Grimm, you wonder how they're going to rate him. You hope that they realize the efficiency there and not as much the counting stats and boost him up. Jared Casey, I know is going to be underrated in this because he's going to be like this undersized, like tight end in the game. They're not going to know how to rate him. They're not going to know about his blocking and all this or that. He's going to end up coming in as like a 74 or something like that. And that will be one where it's going to be like, yes, this dude is a very impactful player on the

Starting point is 00:22:41 team. He should be way higher than this. Michael Ford, I think, is going to be really underrated. He finished as a top five rated guard in the Big 12 a season ago on Pro Football Focus. That would indicate to me, and that was a year ago. I don't know how many of those guys come back and are like Cooper Beebe at Kansas State. He's off to the NFL, so he's gone. So that's already one of the five gone. So if you're just saying he's one of the top five guards in the Big 12, I mean, that automatically deserves probably what, like at least a high eighties.

Starting point is 00:23:07 Could he end up being there? I don't know, but I feel like with the guard position, it's not as sexy. Maybe he ends up in the mid to low eighties and that would be underrated. And then I would say with the linebackers, I am high on what JB Brown and Cornell Wheeler are going to do this season. I think we saw it in flashes last year.

Starting point is 00:23:20 I think more snaps are destined for both guys this year, but I could see both them being a little bit underrated because they didn't have as big of a role a season ago and maybe wind up if they're updating the rosters over the course of the season, certainly soaring up. All right, that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our

Starting point is 00:23:37 YouTube page. Have a great rest of your weekend. We will not have a show on Monday. We'll be back Tuesday celebrating the off days. Well, that is, of course, unless there is any big breaking news. So see you next time with Locked on Jayhawks.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Underrated? What Latest Rankings Tell Us About Kansas Jayhawks Football 97 Days Out From 2024 Season

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