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

Kansas Football hosts the first practice of spring on Sunday, March 2, 2025.

The precise ways in which the Kansas football team fell short in 2024 have informed the ways it approaches the 2025 season — sometimes very directly.

“There’s no secret that we didn’t have much success in the fourth quarter last year,” strength coach Matt Gildersleeve said on Sunday. “So you come up with unique ways to get creative and emphasize those things.”

Indeed, the Jayhawks let late lead after late lead slip away on their way to a disappointing 5-7 season: 17-13 at Illinois, 20-16 against UNLV, 28-17 at West Virginia, 31-28 at Arizona State and 27-26 at Kansas State, and even worse, when they had chances at late rallies they usually went nowhere.

So the first five weeks of KU’s offseason featured an emphasis on the fourth quarter, and therefore constant reminders of the ways in which the Jayhawks had been lacking. They played the last two minutes of the K-State loss repeatedly on the video board. And in an activity they call “perfect discipline,” players were frequently allotted the same amounts of time they had left on the clock for some of their ill-fated two-minute drills to execute certain complex activities, like getting meticulously lined up in particular ways with crowd noise blaring and lights flashing.

And if they messed up, they didn’t get additional chances.

“It was either we’re going to win or we’re going to lose,” Gildersleeve said. “We’re going to accomplish this or we’re not. Because there’s no do-overs — we learned that last season.”

This sort of ethos when it comes to finishing games will likely continue into the next stage of the offseason, as KU kicks off a slate of 15 spring practices, which began on Sunday evening.

“I think we’re going to put more emphasis on situational football,” head coach Lance Leipold said. “We have to be better at certain areas. We know that was an area that we did not excel in last year.”

The hope is that this year’s group of Jayhawks will be better prepared to execute in the clutch than last year’s — and it is indeed a new group, precious few of whom actually contributed meaningfully to that Kansas State game footage that rolled and rolled at the Indoor Football Practice Facility. Between transfers and early-enrolling freshman, more than two dozen newcomers are now charged with getting acclimated to the KU program.

“It’s crazy,” returning defensive tackle D.J. Withers said. “I didn’t think it was going to be as good as it was. They all came into the program, and they all just bought in, pretty much, everybody doing well.”

The spring is about evaluating KU’s talent “more so now than ever,” Leipold said.

“This is almost like our first year, where we’re starting to learn a bunch of names again,” he added.

Gildersleeve cited receivers Emmanuel Henderson Jr. (an Alabama transfer) and Cam Pickett (Ball State) as a pair who stood out physically in his offseason workouts.

He said that with “no solidified spots on this roster” — indeed, in terms of starters, KU returns a quarterback (highly limited during the spring), two offensive linemen, three defensive linemen and very little else — all the players are putting extra effort on display, which was apparent even in Sunday’s opening practice.

“Watch us warm up, it looks different right now because guys are getting evaluated in everything they do and nobody knows where they stand from that standpoint,” Gildersleeve said. “It feels revitalizing, right, it feels reinvigorating right now, and it’s really fun to be part of.”

Two departures

Two scholarship players who were conspicuously absent from KU’s revamped roster were cornerback Damarius McGhee and linebacker Tristian Fletcher.

McGhee, a transfer from LSU, struggled to stay healthy and vie for a third cornerback role in his two seasons with the Jayhawks; Fletcher, an early JUCO recruit in the summer of 2022, stood out in fall camp in 2024 but still saw minimal time during the season.

Leipold confirmed on Sunday that both have left the team and will be finishing school.

“I think both of them right now are just going to graduate and take the next step,” he said. “We appreciate those young men. Both had trouble staying healthy. Good young men, love both of them, love their personalities, very unselfish, never a problem with attitude or work ethic, but yeah, they’re no longer with us.”