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

Kansas head coach Lance Leipold (left) shakes hands with receiver Jaden Nickens during Kansas football's spring practice on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Lawrence.

Kansas coach Lance Leipold’s 19 years as a head coach have featured multiple situations in which his patience and his convictions were rewarded.

When he went 7-3 at Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2012, in what he said was characterized as a “disastrous season” after he had won four national titles in his first five years, he made some small adjustments to his coaching staff — not necessarily voluntarily, he noted — but added the likes of offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki and offensive line coach Daryl Agpalsa. He then won two more championships before leaving for Buffalo.

His second year at Buffalo, as Leipold recalled, the Bulls were 2-8 and an administrator asked him if he was going to make staff changes.

“I won’t say exactly what I said back first — but I’ll tell you off the record someday — but he essentially was asking me if I was going to fire Andy, is what he was asking me, and I said no,” Leipold said. “And then Andy became one of the hottest coordinators in the country.”

Ten years later, and with Kotelnicki having rejoined him at KU after a stint at Penn State, Leipold is still a firm believer in the power of maintaining a consistent foundation while keeping an open mind when it comes to potential tweaks: “When you’re close, you’ve got to make sure that you’re looking at it closely,” he said. “I can’t stand up here and be defensive, but I’m not going to blow it up either.”

“There’s places around the country where they’re firing four or five coaches to shake (it up) and make sure people stay on their toes, and that’s a head coaching philosophy,” he added, “but I try to take a holistic one on what we can do better, and continue to understand that the difference between winning and losing is very, very slim, and we’ve got to find a way to find a way to do that.”

Some of the changes that Leipold has made, after a second straight 5-7 season in which KU found bowl eligibility just out of reach, were apparent on Thursday as the Jayhawks underwent their first fully padded practice of the spring. Kotelnicki’s return as associate head coach and offensive play caller is one. Leipold said KU has simplified some of its offensive terminology, in line with what Kotelnicki might have done at Penn State.

“He’s been instrumental in some thoughts on some of the things that we’ve made slight changes,” Leipold said. “And really, we’ve kind of evolved ourselves into — I know you guys don’t get to see a lot of it, but we used to (run two huddles) and rapid-fire plays at the defense. Now with the staffing models the way they are, we can go two separate groups and some of that kind of slows down a little bit of the chaos at times, but we’re still getting a (lot) of reps and that, so that’s been good.”

Elsewhere on the field, Joe Dineen is now the defensive ends coach as Taiwo Onatolu has moved to focusing solely on special teams.

Also evidence of change was the mere characterization of Thursday’s practice as the first fully padded one of the spring. After a later start to spring football that gave the Jayhawks eight full weeks of conditioning, Leipold opted to begin with two of KU’s lighter practices in helmets and the softer so-called “spider pads” before delving into full action.

“Many times in spring practice you get to a certain point and you feel like you got everything kind of installed, and you got a lot of things accomplished, and then you’re just really practicing and hoping you stay healthy,” he said. “So we took a little different approach … and counted those as our first couple practices, so that really we limited some of that early 11-on-11 banging that you do without the shoulder pads on and saved that for today.”

He said it’s one example of many ways that KU will look to put itself in position to be a healthier and better team down the stretch. The move was in part inspired by what other teams who have gone overseas — as KU will when it heads to London to face Arizona State on Sept. 19 — have done in the past.

“We know that we’ve got to find ways to win close football games, we’ve got to find ways to be a better football team,” Leipold said, “and I’m not doing my job if I’m not keeping an open mind on a lot of different things, and this is one that we wanted that we thought was a good idea.”

KU will be in full pads almost the entire rest of the spring with the possible exception of one practice, Leipold said.

INJURY NOTE

Leipold mentioned that KU might find it a bit more difficult than at some other positions to evaluate where it stands at safety because some players are banged up. Indeed, he said that safeties Khijohnn Cummings-Coleman (an Iowa State transfer) and Mason Ellis, along with linebackers Joseph Credit and Malachi Curvey and cornerback Syeed Gibbs, will be “highly limited” throughout spring practice.

Cornerbacks Austin Alexander and Elijah Cannon (a Mississippi State transfer) and running back Jalen Dupree (a Colorado State transfer) will miss the spring due to surgeries, Leipold said.