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

KU punter Grayden Addison holds an extra point attempt for kicker Tabor Allen against Iowa State at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024.

It was a truly dreadful year for those of us who as at least some small part of our professional duties have to project how Big 12 Conference teams will fare in football.

As a voter in the league’s preseason poll, I was as guilty as anyone of incorrectly assuming that Utah (5-7, 2-7 Big 12) and Oklahoma State (3-9, 0-9 Big 12) would run the league in its first year without traditional powers Oklahoma and Texas.

I suppose I can hang my hat on not having picked eventual Big 12 championship game participant Arizona State to finish last — if only because I put the Sun Devils 13th — but considering I had exact same top six teams as the consensus media poll, and that I projected breakout sensation BYU even lower than the rest of my peers at 15th, I’m not necessarily going to go around promoting my services as a college football clairvoyant.

Meanwhile, on the Kansas-specific front, I perhaps wisely refrained from projecting season-long results in any published piece, but did predict in radio appearances and other venues that I thought the Jayhawks, on the strength of their returning experience and what I believed to be a weak schedule (how wrong I was), would go something like 9-3 and be in contention for a title game spot. Instead, KU opened 1-5 and despite a heroic late-season stretch missed the postseason altogether, as you well know by this point.

Given how wrong virtually everyone was about the Big 12, which will have ASU and Iowa State battling for a place in the College Football Playoff in Saturday’s title game, it might be more useful to look at some of the granular predictions I made with regard to specific KU position groups on July 27, prior to the start of fall camp.

Those actually went fairly well, despite some calamitous errors, and with the Jayhawks’ season at a premature end it might be worth revisiting them to see what they portend for the future.

Quarterback: Cole Ballard will remain the No. 2 quarterback throughout the season.

This was mostly wrong, as beginning with the lead-up to KU’s road game at BYU, Isaiah Marshall took over as the listed No. 2 quarterback on the Jayhawks’ depth chart. He received No. 2 reps in pregame warmups throughout the later weeks of the season.

However, in my defense, it’s not clear if this was in any way performance-based or simply related to an apparent injury Ballard suffered in an abortive appearance as part of a special package of offensive plays at Kansas State.

Prior to that unexpected cameo, he had only played in mop-up duty against Lindenwood and Houston. Marshall didn’t play at all this year and redshirted.

The dynamic between Ballard and Marshall and their relative positions in the quarterback hierarchy will become a pretty prominent storyline if starting quarterback Jalon Daniels, who has one year of eligibility remaining, opts to leave KU, either to transfer or enter the draft.

Running back: Devin Neal will be KU’s all-time leading rusher by the end of October.

So close to perfect, yet so unbelievably wrong.

By the end of October in 2023, Neal had rushed for 771 yards; this time, needing 765 for the record, he had just 758 by the end of the Kansas State game on Oct. 26.

Plenty of KU fans would likely have appreciated a couple more carries for Neal down the stretch in the Sunflower Showdown, especially with how some of the Jayhawks’ late possessions turned out as they struggled to kill the clock while nursing a narrow lead and then lost on a 51-yard field goal.

Neal ended up breaking the record, along with many other career marks, and fulfilling his longtime dream, against Iowa State on Nov. 9 after a bye week.

Wide receiver: Luke Grimm will lead the Jayhawks in catches.

Right on, and he led them in yards too with 690 on 51 receptions.

I anticipated Grimm benefiting from his unique connection with Daniels, which he hadn’t shared with Jason Bean to quite the same extent, but I didn’t quite predict this volume of targets (equal to Lawrence Arnold and Quentin Skinner’s total number of catches combined, although Skinner averaged more than 22 yards per reception), nor did I expect Arnold to take such a dramatic step back as a senior.

Arnold had cleared 700 yards in each of the prior two seasons but finished 2024 with just 360 yards and a single receiving touchdown, though he did run for a score for the first time ever in his final game.

Tight end: No single KU tight end catches 20 passes this year.

Quite accurate.

Jared Casey got close with 18, and Trevor Kardell finished with 12. Offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes spoke all season about the process of discovering that he needed four players — Casey, Kardell, Tevita Ahoafi-Noa and Leyton Cure — to reconstitute the production lost when Mason Fairchild graduated. Considering KU’s tight ends combined for 31 receptions after Fairchild hauled in 27 as a senior, Grimes was pretty much on point.

Ahoafi-Noa and Cure almost exclusively served as blockers, and frankly, nearly every time Daniels targeted them in the passing game something terrible happened (near-interception at ASU, drop by Cure against ISU, Ahoafi-Noa’s fumble at Baylor). Cure will be the only tight end returning next year who actually played in 2024, though DeShawn Hanika, who did not go through senior day, has a chance to come back if he can get a waiver after missing the season due to injury.

Offensive line: Nolan Gorczyca will play the sixth-most snaps among offensive linemen.

Not good at all.

Gorczyca played just 43 snaps, and only 11 in meaningful action against West Virginia. The two primary reasons were the emergence of Shane Bumgardner as a backup guard after he lost the competition to start at center to Bryce Foster, and the gradual acclimation of redshirt freshman Calvin Clements in his return from offseason injury.

Clements frequently had to fill in for tackles Logan Brown and Bryce Cabeldue at one point or another and finished with the sixth-most snaps on the line at 168, according to Pro Football Focus.

I thought Gorczyca’s experience playing both guard and tackle would make him a rotational piece after the coaches talked him up so extensively in the offseason, but maybe 2025 will be the year for him to make his presence felt.

Defensive line: Javier Derritt will be one of KU’s sack leaders.

This is probably my worst prediction of all, given that Derritt did not record a single sack on the season.

He played 99 defensive snaps (though appeared in every game) with a pair of quarterback hurries. Derritt was a fine rotational piece in his lone year as a Jayhawk after transferring from North Dakota State, but he found himself firmly ensconced as KU’s No. 6 option at defensive tackle behind veterans Tommy Dunn Jr., Caleb Taylor, D.J. Withers and Kenean Caldwell and, perhaps most importantly, upstart redshirt freshman Blake Herold.

Defensive tackles coach Jim Panagos had talked up Derritt’s pass-rush potential, hence this prediction, but coordinator Brian Borland ended up declaring Herold the best pass rusher on the defense midway through the season.

Derritt may be gone, but besides Taylor, everyone else of note has a chance to return. Caldwell went through senior day but has one year of eligibility remaining, much like Daniels.

Linebacker: JB Brown will receive some kind of all-conference honor at season’s end.

Still pending, but almost certain to come true, even if it’s just an honorable mention.

Brown had one of the best seasons of any Jayhawk. He had the best PFF grade of any KU player to see significant action on defense besides the top cornerback duo of Cobee Bryant and Mello Dotson, as he graded out at 73.0. He led the team with 74 tackles, including 9.5 for loss and five sacks, as he was consistently one of KU’s best pass-rush options from his linebacker spot.

The KU staff will have to hope incoming South Carolina transfer Bangally Kamara and anyone else it gets from the portal can have as much success as onetime Bowling Green transfer Brown as part of a brand-new linebacker group next season.

Cornerback: Cobee Bryant will set a new career high in interceptions this season.

I probably did myself a disservice with the way I worded this one, as Bryant ended up matching his career high with four picks, three of which came in a single memorable game against Houston. So that’s technically another failure for me, especially given that my rationale for making the statement was not borne out in reality.

The premise of my prediction was that teams would be forced to target Bryant more because they would come to view Dotson as a major threat after his strong 2023 campaign. While Dotson had a great 2024 season and by some metrics outperformed Bryant, Bryant’s share of targets didn’t change all that much. Teams went at him 13.6% of the time instead of 10.2%, a difference of just eight targets overall.

Neither of these mainstays of the secondary will be back next season.

Safety: Only one of the Dye brothers will see significant action in 2024.

It wasn’t a great season for either Dye brother. Both returnee Jalen Dye and Utah State transfer Devin Dye struggled with injuries throughout the season and didn’t grade out particularly well in the limited action they did see. Devin Dye played 163 snaps, taking on pretty sizable responsibility against UNLV and West Virginia in particular and then intercepting a pass against K-State, while Jalen Dye played the majority of his 131 snaps in one long loss to TCU.

The safety who ended up seeing unexpected and quite protracted action alongside O.J. Burroughs, due to the Dyes’ injuries and that of Mason Ellis, was redshirt freshman Taylor Davis, from Missouri City, Texas. Davis made four starts down the stretch in seven games of considerable playing time and finished the year with 33 tackles. He projects as a likely starting option in 2025.

Special teams: KU will make a field goal longer than 44 yards.

This time my specific wording benefited me considerably. I was pretty confident Owen Piepergerdes would be kicking long field goals whether he was the ostensible starting kicker or not. That did not occur, but I was still right on the prediction.

In his lone year as the Jayhawks’ placekicker, Tabor Allen started 6-for-6 on field goals in the first half and then went 6-for-9 in the second, meaning he went on the reverse trajectory from the rest of his team.

He did, however, manage to make a 47-yard field goal in the second quarter of KU’s victory over Iowa State, one of the Jayhawks’ only scores shortly before halftime all season. Somehow it was the longest field goal by a Jayhawk since Jacob Borcila’s 50-yarder at Duke on Sept. 25, 2021.