With eye toward next level, Willis wants to be ‘more than just a power back’

photo by: Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas running back Yasin Willis goes through a drill during KU Football's practice on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026, in Lawrence.

One could be forgiven for pigeonholing the 6-foot-1, 230-pound Yasin Willis as a certain type of runner based on his track record from two years at Syracuse.

Certainly his 17 combined receptions for an average of four yards over his two seasons with the Orange don’t indicate that he could potentially be a threat out of the backfield.

But in meetings with coaches upon arriving at Kansas this spring, Willis asserted that, as strength coach Matt Gildersleeve remembered it, “I want to be more than just a power back.”

He told associate head coach Andy Kotelnicki the same thing: “That was something that I explained to him that I wanted to show off,” Willis said, “and I told him how much I actually work on being that type of player.”

KU may not need Willis to be the world’s most multidimensional running back. That is, after all, why they acquired both him and lightning-quick Kansas State transfer Dylan Edwards, to say nothing of Colorado State transfer Jalen Dupree: “Now, we’re going to position the best players and put them in the best positions to go out and execute,” running backs coach Jonathan Wallace said.

And to hear Gildersleeve tell it, Willis knows where his bread is buttered: “You got to know your superpower, right?” Gildersleeve said. “… He knows what his superpower is, which is putting his shoulder down and running through somebody, and he likes to do that too.”

On the other hand, a professional-caliber running back, as Willis aspires to be, can’t be limited to just one positive characteristic.

“I think very early in the cycle of acquiring talent, right, there’s certain marks that we look for, there’s certain traits we look for,” Wallace said. “Then there’s also, too, the development side of it that I take a tremendous (amount) of pride in for the running back position. And you look at what these guys are doing in the NFL, we really want to produce every-down type of guys. We want them to be able to have success in every situation and not have to say, ‘Hey, you need to be able to go and do this.'”

Wallace said he’s been impressed by the time and effort Willis has put into developing the pass-catching component of his game, even just by getting together with Kotelnicki to drill it during spare moments in practice.

It also helps that Kotelnicki is the type of play caller, as Willis points out, who does not hesitate to place running backs in the slot or split them out wide. That could give him the chance to display that, as he says, he has great hands.

“I feel like that’s something that a lot of people haven’t been able to see with me,” Willis said. “Me personally, I just want people to know, especially for the future levels, (like) the NFL, that I’m not just a big back that just (has) downhill power, I want to show how much I can run routes, how much I could catch out the backfield,” Willis said. “I feel like I’m very versatile and I just want to show everybody that.”

Then, if Willis does catch the ball in space, as Kotelnicki has noted, it will not necessarily be easy for secondary players to get him to the ground.

“He runs really physical,” Kotelnicki said on Thursday, “so he’s going to break a ton of arm tackles, but his vision between the tackles and his suddenness at the second and third levels has really been impressive and fun to watch, so I’m excited to see what it’s like when we play games.”