photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Kansas wide receivers Luke Grimm (11) and Quentin Skinner (0) celebrate after Grimm scored a touchdown during the second half of an NCAA college football game against BYU Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023, in Lawrence. Kansas won 38-27.

The Kansas wide receivers have become so experienced, and with that experience developed such a high level of sophistication, that position coach Terrence Samuel is willing to give them the chance to sit in on quarterback meetings.

“That’s another way to try to help speed up the process for older guys,” Samuel said. “Because they’re tired of me … You would only do that with guys that you know care, they want to get better, they want to have aspirations.”

And so three fifth-year seniors who certainly fit that description — Lawrence Arnold, Luke Grimm and Quentin Skinner — can find a way to take another step forward. The three have been contributing to Jayhawk football since before Lance Leipold’s staff even came on campus, and Samuel, who said he’s “never satisfied,” believes they can find additional ways to improve their understanding even at this late stage.

“The biggest thing at the moment is I’m trying to get them to understand what the quarterback sees,” he explained. “When you start to understand from the quarterback’s perspective and now you run a route, you get yourself open a little bit easier, and timing-wise, you’re right there when the quarterback needs you.”

Arnold, Grimm and Skinner have combined for 37 career touchdowns and 4,668 receiving yards. They all worked last fall on getting that yardage number a little higher than it would have been otherwise by becoming better runners after the catch. That meant lots of practice making defenders miss in the hopes of getting better YAC — yards after the catch.

“I don’t think we got as much as I would have wanted,” Samuel said in retrospect. “It got better, I think.”

One of this spring’s emphases builds off those YAC exercises of last fall but requires more improvisation and, yes, a certain comprehension of the quarterback’s perspective. Samuel is cultivating his charges’ understanding of scramble rules — essentially, where receivers should go when a quarterback is on the move.

“As I’ve gotten a little bit older, (I’ve seen that) those are some of the things that really equated to a lot of extra plays, explosive plays, and gets you in the end zone,” he said.

Basically, the wideouts need to shake their defenders while remaining in their quarterback’s line of sight.

“Once you know a quarterback goes in one direction, you can’t just stand right there,” he said. “It’s easy for a guy to cover you. So you got to have a place where you need to go to meet him so the quarterback can see you. We teach these guys all those things. We teach them when a quarterback rolls to the right, what should you be doing when you’re on the front side or when you’re on the back side.”

It’s an emphasis that makes a lot of sense given the Jayhawks’ personnel. One of the primary traits that makes quarterback Jalon Daniels special is his improvisational ability, and certainly in the past each receiver has found a way to take advantage.

For example, against Illinois last season he found Grimm for 48 yards on a ball he released all the way near the right sideline and nearly eight seconds after the start of the play. Another third-down conversion to Arnold came seven seconds in after Daniels juked an Illini tackle in his own end zone. And one of Skinner’s numerous highlight-reel catches last year came against Nevada on an otherwise lifeless second-and-4 play when he found his way to the sideline and Daniels located him.

“When you got athletic quarterbacks that can improv and do different things, do things off schedule, there are huge plays for wide receivers,” Samuel said. “You really have to try to embrace that.”

Arnold is out for the rest of the spring due to injury. That’s given more opportunities to some younger players — basically the rest of the group besides Grimm, Skinner, Doug Emilien (whom Samuel added he’d also be comfortable having sit in with the quarterbacks) and Trevor Wilson — and Samuel said, “What they don’t know, we’re finding out.”

“I need them to start making more plays,” he added of the young wideouts. “I don’t think we’ve caught the ball as well as I wanted to … They’re just numbers right now. I don’t want to put no names to them just yet because we got a lot to get done.”

He said that part of the legacy of the longtime wideouts will be how the room lives on without them (come 2025 and beyond).

“That leadership component, I’m always trying to work that in them, and now you know, LJ’s stepped into it, Luke’s stepped into it, Skinner’s stepped into it,” Samuel said. “It’s been pleasant to be able to just sit back and watch these guys push. They push themselves, they push the other guys behind them. When they leave, I think they’re going to feel like the wide receiver room’s going to be in a good place moving forward.”