Maybe the Kansas football offense won’t feature a lot of Torry Locklin early in the season. Or maybe Les Miles doesn’t want Coastal Carolina spending time preparing for Locklin. Either way, KU’s head coach downplayed this week his team’s interest in running plays out of a Wildcat formation. The subject came up during the Big 12 media teleconference on Monday when Miles fielded a question about the ...
Pooka Williams Jr. is the undisputed star of the Kansas football offense. If you ask some of the Jayhawks, though, the preseason All-Big 12 running back has more than just a backup or sidekick in Velton Gardner. Even though Gardner is entering his sophomore season having not yet carried the ball more than five times in a KU game, at least one of his teammates views Gardner as the co-star in Williams’ magic ...
The Kansas football team’s quarterback competition could carry over into actual games instead of reaching a conclusion during this week’s practices. Backtracking from what he said less than a week ago on the matter, head coach Les Miles stated during his Monday video press conference that “there’s a good possibility” both of KU’s top two QBs could play in the Jayhawks’ season opener Saturday ...
Barring any unexpected developments between now and Saturday night, it seems most of the Kansas football team’s starting lineup for the upcoming season opener is set. The Jayhawks unveiled their first public depth chart of 2020 on Monday, and only two starting jobs on offense remained unresolved. The defensive two-deep didn’t include any either-or scenarios. As head coach Les Miles throughout preseason ...
Kenny Logan Jr. appeared in all 12 games for the Kansas football team as a true freshman a year ago. But you might have missed him if your eyes weren’t glued to the action during special teams situations. With his role expanding to defense, Logan should be much easier to spot when the Jayhawks play this season. “I think he’ll play several spots for us,” KU head coach Les Miles said of Logan, a ...
Apparently the Kansas football team’s ongoing quarterback competition remains too close to call, a little more than a week before the Jayhawks’ 2020 debut. That doesn’t mean KU will try to play both Thomas MacVittie and Miles Kendrick when the season arrives, though. Head coach Les Miles indicated this week he would stick with whomever is No. 1 on the depth chart when KU kicks off versus Coastal Carolina ...
When Kansas football coach Les Miles speaks publicly about his team’s defensive linemen, he describes them as “big, strong, athletic men.” While that may be true, senior defensive lineman Sam Burt also was accurate in his assessment, calling the unit “kind of a young group.” The two statements don’t have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, the Jayhawks likely need some of their D-line newcomers to ...
Kansas senior defensive lineman Sam Burt summed up one of the many drawbacks of playing football during the COVID-19 crisis succinctly. “It stinks,” Burt began, while describing what it will be like for the Jayhawks to open their season without any fans in attendance. “I know my family wants to be there. I know a lot of guys’ families want to be there,” Burt told reporters during a video conference ...
Dru Prox doesn't know exactly when or how it happened, but the Kansas linebacker remembers vividly the surge of emotions that accompanied the season-ending shoulder damage he suffered in the Jayhawks’ Big 12 opener nearly a year ago. “Pain. I was very upset,” Prox recalled. “I was very mad that happened when it happened, because I felt like I kind of had let my team down at that point.” An ...
Gone are the days of 11 a.m. college football kickoffs in Lawrence — at least for this year’s season opener. The Kansas football team will have to wait all day on Sept. 12 for the Jayhawks’ nonconference matchup with Coastal Carolina, set to begin at 9 p.m., the Big 12 and KU announced Tuesday. The abnormally late start time allows the Jayhawks’ 2020 debut under head coach Les Miles to air nationally ...
The Big 12 reportedly has a plan ready in case one (or more) of its teams loses available players to COVID-19 quarantine during the upcoming season. As first reported by Sports Illustrated and later confirmed by Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard to 247 Sports and other outlets, the Big 12 will require a team dealing with positive virus tests to enter a game with at least a 53-man roster. But there’s ...
Kansas football fans got a rare opportunity this past weekend to watch a high school recruit tied to the program playing on national television. They obviously weren’t the only ones watching Class of 2021 quarterback Ben Easters closely. With his Brownsburg football team playing a marquee game on ESPN2 Saturday night, Easters told 247 Sports’ Steve Wiltfong that KU coaches texted him beforehand to let them ...
There will be no fans in attendance when the University of Kansas football team kicks off its season Sept. 12 at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. In a message posted to the university’s website Monday, KU Chancellor Douglas Girod shared that the Jayhawks won’t have fans at any sporting events through the month of September. The chancellor stated that KU’s pandemic medical advisory team recommended ...
A year after experiencing his first losing season as a head coach in almost two decades, Les Miles figures to take on an even larger challenge in his second year at the University of Kansas: leading a football program through a pandemic. While other conferences have postponed their seasons until the spring semester, the Big 12 will try to press onward. The Jayhawks went 3-9 in 2019 with Miles in charge, but ...
After spending much of their lives racing and competing, University of Kansas cross country runners have had a bizarre spring and summer because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus wiped out all long-distance opportunities during what would have been the outdoor track season this past spring, and head coach Stanley Redwine could sense the excitement in the runners when they returned to Lawrence in mid-August ...
Torry Locklin arrived at the University of Kansas in 2019 as a quarterback. And in a way, at least, Locklin still is. But KU’s coaches envision the redshirt freshman more like a Swiss Army knife than even a dual-threat QB. Appearing in four games for the Jayhawks last year, Locklin lined up as a Wildcat QB on a few occasions, only rushing the ball three times for four yards. Offensive coordinator Brent ...
Elijah Jones’ responsibilities within the Kansas football defense have become a lot more extensive this summer. Now in his third year with the program, the cornerback who joined the Jayhawks as a junior college transfer in 2018 could find himself in a starting role this fall, after playing infrequently as a reserve in 2019. The 6-foot-1, 185-pound defensive back from Cape Coral, Fla., thinks his game has ...
On the day the Kansas volleyball season originally was slated to start, the Jayhawks finally were able to release their pandemic shortened 2020 calendar. Instead of opening their season in late August with nonconference matchups, KU will play a Big 12-only schedule that begins the last weekend of September. The Jayhawks will face every team in the conference twice, but instead of Big 12 volleyball teams ...
Both this week and last Kansas football coach Les Miles discussed his team’s preseason quarterback competition. And on each occasion Miles began the chats by voicing his trust in offensive coordinator Brent Dearmon’s leadership and process with the matter. “Those guys are competing for a spot there and they’re getting good coaching,” Miles said Wednesday, after naming Thomas MacVittie, Miles Kendrick, ...
Leaders from the Kansas football team shared late Thursday night their vexation with racism, social injustice and police brutality in this country, releasing a joint statement that said, in part, “enough is enough.” Their message, shared on the program’s social media accounts, came at the end of a day when the Jayhawks spent much of their time voicing their frustrations on those matters inside Anderson ...