photo by: Chance Parker/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas freshman Harry Stewart III (25) runs through drills during practice on Friday, August 9, 2024.

Not many teams in college football have backfields like Kansas’. In fact, in the eyes of the PwC SMU Athletic Forum that picks candidates for the Doak Walker Award, only nine others do.

KU was one of 10 schools, and just a pair in the Big 12, to have two players — Devin Neal and Daniel Hishaw Jr. — on the watchlist for the award that goes to the nation’s best running back.

That’s a lot of talent that will demand a lot of carries. But KU is also tasked with doing what it can to harness the diverse skill sets of the rest of its running backs.

The slippery Sevion Morrison is entering his fifth season of college football but played just 30 snaps last season and has battled injuries. Harry Stewart III made a splash as an early-enrolling freshman in the spring and head coach Lance Leipold has suggested he’ll fight for time behind Neal and Hishaw. And redshirt freshman Johnny Thompson Jr. is settling into his second camp in the program.

“The way that we train our guys is to be all-down backs,” running backs coach Jonathan Wallace said. “You got to be able to do everything. But there’s still going to be roles that we seek out for each of these guys to be able to play them.”

Added Morrison: “Everybody’s set is different. Sometimes we joke about what this person can do, or we highly praise what that person can do, but overall it’s fun, because you just see a little bit of everything.”

Morrison, whom Wallace called “flashy” and “explosive,” may have the clearest path to playing time.

Wallace added that he was “nicked up here and there” in the spring but that he faces a much brighter outlook this fall, including — with Neal handling a rather light workload given his longtime experience — running some reps with the first-team offense.

“He’s done a really good job of managing himself, and his body, and his process when he walks in the building of taking care of his body the way that he needs to,” Wallace said.

The KU coaching staff showed a willingness to experiment with him when he was available last year. Wallace noted that Morrison has improved at pass protection, and didn’t want to get into specifics about future plans for him but referenced that his skills were on display against Kansas State last season. In that game, he spent a couple snaps at wide receiver.

Morrison said he embraces opportunities to play in the slot, out wide or even at fullback to serve as a “Swiss Army knife” on offense.

“I know if I stay on top of my injuries and just keep that body ready,” he said, “the sky’s the limit.”

Thompson has a whole host of areas he’s designated for improvement after redshirting his first season on campus. The 5-foot-11, 200-pound back from Canoga Park, California, said he’s worked on his body while also training himself to better identify gaps and creases prior to the snap.

“It’s a process every day,” he said. “Taking it day by day, doing as much as I can. My day will come.”

Wallace said of the young running back that “it’s really starting to piece together for him really well.”

The newest addition, Stewart dazzled when he first arrived on campus, in part because his body seemed so ready for the collegiate level; strength coach Matt Gildersleeve said in the spring, “His calves are bigger than my thighs and his thighs are bigger than my waist.” He also got to take advantage of the benefits of early enrollment.

“Understanding the playbook, and how complex the college playbook is compared to high school, definitely helped me,” he said. “Also just team chemistry, getting adjusted early instead of just coming into the summer (when) they’re all coming at you at the same time. So I feel like in the spring, it was honestly a challenge, but the way I got adjusted, how much I learned during the spring, definitely helped me.”

His fall camp got off to a bit of a quieter start. As Stewart noted, “It was some long days in spring ball; I feel like every day in fall camp’s a long day.”

“We threw a lot of offense at these guys, which was good,” Wallace said. “He was, early on, slow a little bit, playing a little bit slow, but … (now) you start seeing him play a lot faster, which is pretty typical of young guys.”

All of the running backs benefit from the culture of the position group, in which players hold each other accountable.

“For example, if I come in sleepy, closed eyes, Deuce (Hishaw) is going to either yell, ‘Sevi, get up,’ or Dev (is) going to say, ’28, is you awake?'” Morrison said. “We just do little stuff like that, like joking, but we all know that it’s coming from a serious place: ‘Wake up, we got to turn it on.'”

And the young upstarts in particular get to learn from award-caliber veteran players.

“It’s great having guys like Deuce, Sevi and Dev to look up to and take small stuff from them and apply it to my game,” Thompson said. “I think it’s definitely helpful when me and Harry are allowed to take those tips because we’re allowed to both apply it and critique each other.”

Added Stewart: “At the elite level they play with, and all the knowledge that they know, I just want to take as much as I can, take as much knowledge because they’ve played so much football. For me coming in, I just want to be humble, be able to take in all that info, and when my time comes, my time comes.”

Importantly, they get to accumulate this knowledge without the immediate pressure to contribute that those players faced when they arrived in Lawrence.

“Harry, he’s really starting to catch his second wind with everything,” Wallace said. “And I think that’s what really makes it exciting for a guy like him. The difference there is, Dev had to figure it out faster.”