photo by: Nick Krug

Kansas wide receiver Doug Emilien (5) cruises in for a touchdown against Lindenwood during the fourth quarter on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024 at Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas.

While the transfer portal officially opens on Monday, the frenzy has already begun.

Graduate transfers have long been able to enter the portal, and the Kansas football coaching staff has already dished out a host of scholarship offers to four-year college and JUCO transfers, many of which have players have reported on social media in recent days.

Plus, just a few days removed from the end of its ill-fated 2024 season, KU already has a pair of transfer commitments in former South Carolina and Pitt linebacker Bangally Kamara and, as of Monday, Iowa running back Leshon Williams.

Given that the Jayhawks could lose as many as 38 players who went through senior-day festivities, not to mention their own potential outgoing transfers, a lot more help will be needed.

Here are some of the primary positions at which KU needs to build up its arsenal in the portal, and a look at the sorts of players the Jayhawks are already pursuing based on those outstanding offers.

1. Wide receiver

Credit where credit is due: The Kansas staff did a great job bolstering what had looked like a potentially insufficient freshman class by flipping a pair of prospects from other schools late in the fall. Longtime target Bryson Hayes, of Maize, ditched Nebraska for the Jayhawks, and Jaden Nickens, an Oklahoma native who goes to school in California, pledged to KU for the promise of playing both football and basketball. They join Jackson Cook and Tate Nagy in the 2025 class.

That said, whether Jalon Daniels or someone else is throwing passes next year, a group consisting of four freshmen with Doug Emilien and Keaton Kubecka is not going to be remotely sufficient. Emilien, who will be a sixth-year senior, is an accomplished blocker on the edge but has 11 catches for 102 yards in his career. Wide receivers coach Terrence Samuel has said, “I do not have a problem with Keaton playing an entire game or an entire season,” but he did not in fact get the chance to play at all in 2024.

Existing offers: Bryson Canty, a 6-foot-2 wide receiver from Columbia. Canty caught 43 balls for 760 yards and nine touchdowns as the Lions shared the Ivy League title for the first time since 1961. The Ivy doesn’t allow for redshirting or for grad students to play, but Canty should have one year of eligibility left for the rest of Division I since he only played three games due to injury in 2023. He also has offers from Liberty, Wake Forest and more.

2. Cornerback

It’s hard to imagine a KU secondary without the ever-reliable Cobee Bryant and Mello Dotson, but that’s precisely the reality the Jayhawks will experience in 2025.

At least compared to preseason expectations, KU probably got less from Damarius McGhee and more from Jalen Todd than most anticipated entering 2024, as both tried to soak up as much knowledge as they could from Bryant and Dotson.

The LSU transfer McGhee still has one year left to play but hasn’t been able to stay on the field, after sitting out most of 2023 with a back injury and then missing the entire second half of the 2024 season outside of three snaps against Colorado. Todd, as a true freshman, began the year playing mostly special teams but settled into a consistent role as KU’s nickel corner. He played 89 combined snaps on defense in the final two games of the year and broke up a pair of passes.

Brian Dilworth and Jameel Croft Jr. played even more sparingly, Jacoby Davis didn’t at all and two more freshman corners, Austin Alexander and Aundre Gibson, redshirted. Whether McGhee and Todd are the top two outside corners next year or Todd plays nickel again, the Jayhawks desperately need at least one proven veteran option at this position.

Existing offers: Isaiah Reed, a 6-foot corner from Brown. Another Ivy product, Reed only played four games in 2024 so has a final year left. During the previous season he had 50 tackles and five interceptions for the Bears. Reed is in high demand, as his other offers include Baylor, Georgia Tech, Houston, Stanford, Texas Tech and UCF.

3. Defensive end

For the first time in years, there’s more reason for optimism when it comes to the weak-side defensive end spot — where KU returns this year’s contributors Dean Miller, DJ Warner and Bai Jobe and could also get future production from the likes of Dakyus Brinkley and Dylan Brooks — than the strong-side position.

Warner struggled to make an impact as a true freshman, and a hand injury in fall camp derailed the redshirt freshman Jobe somewhat, but both of the former highly touted recruits have massive potential. Miller didn’t make the immediate leap many within the program had forecasted, but caught fire late in the year and during KU’s late win streak looked like a bona fide pass rusher.

The issue then becomes the strong-side spot, where the Jayhawks have no immediate replacements for Jereme Robinson, Dylan Wudke and Ronald McGee unless they can get one of the aforementioned returners to bulk up and prove himself as a run stopper. If strong-side defensive end were its own position, this might be No. 1 on the list.

Existing offers: Langden Kitchen, who at a listed 6-foot-7 and 270 pounds certainly has size on his side. Kitchen is a third-team all-conference player from Division II Northwest Missouri State, which recently made a coaching change. He has two years to play and recently received offers from Cal, Iowa State and Oklahoma State. KU had also pursued JUCO pass-rush end Chandavian Bradley, but after putting the Jayhawks in his top two schools he picked OSU instead.

4. Linebacker

The cupboard is almost completely bare at this position after the graduations of Taiwan Berryhill Jr., JB Brown, Cornell Wheeler and more. Jayson Gilliom played 116 defensive snaps, but has actually seen his overall playing time decline year over year, and his inclusion in games during the 2024 season was heavily scheme-dependent. Logan Brantley and Tristian Fletcher have a combined 24 career defensive snaps, 23 of which are Fletcher’s, though like Gilliom have also contributed on special teams. The future is bright for Jon Jon Kamara, who also played on special teams at the end of his redshirt season.

Adding Bangally Kamara, a versatile and proven performer over years of power-conference football, is a great start, but KU could use probably two more players for its weak-side and middle linebacker spots, and it’s not entirely clear how Hawk linebacker will work in 2025 after now-departed safety Marvin Grant saw the bulk of the action there in the so-called Cinco role this past season. (Safeties Jalen or Devin Dye could be candidates to replace him there.)

Existing offers: KU is looking to the JUCO ranks here for players like Kyle Ferm of Citrus College in Glendora, California, who has three years to play, and Odera Okaka of the College of San Mateo, who has two. Ferm tallied 50 tackles with two sacks and an interception this season, while Okaka had 35 with two sacks. The Jayhawks would seem to be in a somewhat stronger position with Ferm as his lone power-conference offer (he’s reported others from schools like Fresno State, San Diego State and Wyoming), while Okaka has offers from Cal, Mississippi State, Penn State and West Virginia.

5. Tight end

The key here is DeShawn Hanika. If the Topeka native, a 6-foot-6, 250-pounder, comes back for what would be his seventh year of college football — three years of which he has missed in their entirety, most recently the 2024 season after suffering a leg injury — he could provide a solid red-zone threat for whoever plays quarterback for KU in 2025 (more on that later). Hanika did not go through senior day, which makes sense given he has not actually played for the Jayhawks.

If both he and Leyton Cure, who looked solid as a blocker in 2024 even though he was primarily thought of as a receiving threat entering KU, come back along with younger options in Jaden Hamm and Carson Bruhn, that’s not a bad start. KU could potentially add another in the portal, but it wouldn’t be nearly as dire as if Cure, who played 98 snaps and dropped the only pass thrown his way all season, were the top returning tight end.

Of course, given that Hanika hasn’t played a football game since Nov. 26, 2022, he might take some time to settle in. And offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes demonstrated that he likes to use a variety of players at this position. It seems more likely than not KU will make it an offseason priority.

Existing offers: Bryce Anderson, another JUCO product who caught 27 passes for 293 yards and five touchdowns during his redshirt freshman season at Iowa Central Community College. The problem here for KU is that Anderson has been committed to Memphis (from which the Jayhawks just flipped Williams) since June. If the Pac-12 still counts as a power conference in some sense, then Washington State is the only other power-conference school to offer Anderson, and the Cougars also did it after his commitment.

Honorable mentions

Guard: The offensive line as a whole will become a much bigger need if right tackle Logan Brown, who went through senior day, and/or center Bryce Foster decide to leave for the NFL. But if those two return, they could partner with Kobe Baynes and Calvin Clements to give KU one of its best position groups in 2025. That leaves one guard spot open. Nolan Gorczyca could take it, and KU also has a lot of young players on the interior of its offensive line, headlined by Amir Herring, who transferred from Michigan last summer. This would be a pretty obvious position for a portal addition, though.

Quarterback: If Daniels leaves, a lot of KU fans are probably going to assume that Isaiah Marshall will immediately take over his starting spot. Don’t count on that, not just because Cole Ballard exists, but because both he and Marshall are very inexperienced and there might be a chance to grab a veteran quarterback in the portal. Getting Jason Bean from North Texas certainly worked out well in the end for Leipold’s staff.

Safety: This could depend on, as referenced, how KU chooses to address the Cinco spot, and its level of confidence in the Dye brothers after neither was consistently available to play in 2024. If nothing changes, hypothetically speaking, Jalen Dye playing Cinco with Taylor Davis, Devin Dye, Mason Ellis, Damani Maxson and Kaleb Purdy at safety isn’t a bad group by any means, but it also doesn’t feature the proven returning experience KU had last year in Grant and O.J. Burroughs.