photo by: Henry Greenstein/Journal-World

The Kansas football team meets at midfield after its scrimmage at Rock Chalk Park on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024.

Whether a coaching staff wants to supply them or not, Kansas coach Lance Leipold said on Wednesday, there have to be opportunities for players to tackle.

“It’s hard because you’re trying to keep guys healthy and you want to be fundamentally sound and doing all these things,” Leipold said, “but you’re still going to have to tackle people in this game, and that’s one of the things you don’t want to be getting away from you in the first part of the season.”

Tackling and all, KU held its first scrimmage of fall camp Wednesday night at Rock Chalk Park. The scrimmage portion of practice was closed to media, but Leipold spoke to reporters afterward and led with his defining impression: As in most scrimmages, particularly in the early stages of camp, the defense outshined the offense.

“I really liked the way the defense was flying around, played with a lot of great energy, they were physical,” Leipold said. “Offensively, (I) thought even if the ball carrier was called down, we put the ball on the ground too many times.”

Leipold named pass-rush defensive ends Dean Miller and Deshawn Warner, defensive tackle Tommy Dunn Jr. and linebacker Logan Brantley among standouts on that side of the ball; as for the offense, Leipold centered much of his discussion around opportunities to reincorporate injured players into action. For example, he noted that wide receiver Lawrence Arnold “got tackled, for the first time, really, since last season” after he missed most of the spring due to injury, Keaton Kubecka had some catches after being slowed by a hamstring issue and quarterback Jalon Daniels did everything he was scheduled to do and got 11-on-11 work.

“That’s a balancing act for us right now,” Leipold said. “We got to get him back in sync and do it … to get all the bodies around him and get used to that and those things, but again, it needs to be good load management. I think they use that word in the NBA or something like that? I think we might borrow it or something this year.”

Leipold also had some praise for veteran receiver Trevor Wilson, who he noted continues to be one of the team’s fastest players.

“He’s not the tallest, but he’s a really good threat on the outside as well as on the inside,” he said, “and that gives us some vertical stretches, we can run reverses with him and stuff. A lot of things.”

KU’s special-teams prospects remain more enigmatic at this point in fall camp, particularly at the kicker spot, and Leipold said that in the scrimmage Charlie Weinrich went 1-for-2 and Owen Piepergerdes and Tabor Allen had one attempt each.

“I like the competition,” Leipold said. “… I think we have three. I really do.”

With Wednesday night’s action the Jayhawks brought to a close their second set of practices in fall camp, as they planned to continue their four-days-on, one-day-off schedule with a team activity in Kansas City on Thursday. Leipold said he expects the team to scrimmage twice more, undergoing some intermittent live periods in practice in the interim.