photo by: Missy Minear/Kansas Athletics

Kansas co-defensive coordinator D.K. McDonald coaches during fall camp in Lawrence on Wednesday, July 31, 2024.

In the two decades before he came to Kansas, D.K. McDonald learned from a slew of accomplished defensive coaches.

He began his coaching career at the Division II level and worked under Lou Tepper, who had been a coordinator at Colorado and Illinois; in his days on Matt Campbell’s staffs at Toledo and Iowa State, he worked for well-regarded Jon Heacock; when he started with the Philadelphia Eagles their DC was Jonathan Gannon, who is now the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals.

One thing that’s remained consistent throughout his career, he said, is the importance of good organization and a unifying message.

If that’s the case, then it bodes well for McDonald, now in his first offseason as the defensive coordinator at KU, that he, head coach Lance Leipold and new defensive backs coach Brandon Shelby all independently brought up on Thursday the importance of simplicity for McDonald’s defense.

McDonald says he sees a simple approach as the best way for his group to accomplish its objectives: “to play fast, play physical and play for each other.”

“The defense has to be simple where they can learn it, and they can go out and implement it at a high level,” said Shelby, who spent last year as an analyst under McDonald before both were promoted, and who pointed out that in some cases these days “you get a guy here early summer that has to be ready to play by August.”

Indeed, the defense is a brand-new one for KU this season, far beyond the fact that its former coordinator Brian Borland retired following the 2024 campaign. The Jayhawks lost their top three strong-side defensive ends, top three linebackers, both starting cornerbacks and both starting safeties to graduation.

“You always go a little harder for guys that you care about,” McDonald said. “So getting this group just to come together as one unit is fun because we got a lot of new guys.”

That means an accelerated learning curve.

“Back in the old days, you would come as a freshman, you would redshirt and then there was a process,” Shelby said. “Well, with the portal, you got to take what you get, which is typically a new team almost every year, and you got to get those guys to learn your process, learn your plays, and it has to be simple, because if you cloud your mind with too many things you’re not playing as fast as you need to play.”

As it happens, McDonald’s ability to make concepts straightforward and understandable — things like hand placement and where defensive backs’ eyes should be — is what Shelby admired most about him during the 2024 campaign.

“Some of the drills that he does that I definitely will implement (are) different ways of teaching different key terms,” Shelby said. “Because the technique’s the technique. Man-to-man is man-to-man and for the most part every coach kind of does the same thing. But what you try to do is you try to learn different key terms or phrases that can help the guys learn a lot easier.”

McDonald joined the Jayhawks as the co-defensive coordinator and cornerbacks coach in February 2024, a rare external hire under Leipold after Jordan Peterson had left for Texas A&M. McDonald had spent the prior season as the defensive backs coach for the Eagles, earning him instant credibility with KU’s NFL-hopeful DBs, many of whom are now going through the draft process.

“It’s been fun hearing from those guys,” McDonald said, “hearing them say ‘Hey, I hear your voice still in my head,’ and just seeing them be successful.”

Over the course of 2024, Leipold said he sat in on more of McDonald’s meetings than any other coach’s and was impressed by his confidence and his interactions with players.

“When Brian told me his intentions to retire, (I) had some conversations with D.K. about his vision, what he saw, and it was very much in line with what I’d like to see us step forward as a defense,” Leipold said on Thursday. “And I’m excited to see this group led by him kind of take the field here in a couple weeks. I like his attention to detail, his intensity, his expectations of getting the little things right.”

Leipold referenced the vaunted continuity that his coaching staff once possessed, before it underwent quite a few more changes over the past two offseasons.

“At the same time, when you’re able to add new staff members, you see how other things are done, little ways of tweaking, little things of making your program better,” Leipold said, “and I look forward to D.K. being a big part of what we do to move this program forward.”

A full look at McDonald’s scheme is still half a year away, but he has his own aforementioned key tenets set forth, and Leipold expects qualities like pursuit to the ball and sound fundamentals, previously expressed by McDonald’s cornerback group, to translate to the whole defense.

“I’ve always been involved in all the other position groups, talking to them, encouraging, giving little tips,” McDonald said. “So it’s really just taking the next transitional steps and then making sure everything is organized, and then as we get in here in spring, just making the calls and everything like that and setting the defensive mindset that we want here.”

The Jayhawks take the field for their first spring practice on March 2.