photo by: Missy Minear/Kansas Athletics

Kansas center Bryce Foster prepares to block against D.J. Withers on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Lawrence.

This year’s edition of Big 12 media days will give some new Kansas football players a turn in the spotlight.

Yes, Jalon Daniels will indeed be in attendance as usual at Ford Center at The Star down in Frisco, Texas, and indeed, he’ll have plenty of time to answer questions from local and national reporters about his health, his new teammates and coaches and his goals for the season ahead.

But speaking along with Daniels and head coach Lance Leipold on Wednesday will be three linemen — so, already members of position groups that don’t necessarily get a lot of attention — in center Bryce Foster, defensive end Dean Miller and defensive tackle D.J. Withers. Their participation was announced on Monday.

They’ll all be representing KU for the first time at this event, in Miller and Withers’ cases after biding their time working their way up the Jayhawks’ depth chart to become prominent veterans, and in Foster’s case after transferring to KU in June of 2024. (This time last year, in fact, his arrival was one of the pressing topics for Leipold to discuss at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.)

The very fact that players like Miller and Withers could develop so much as to make it to Big 12 media days — more on that later — will make for an interesting topic of conversation with Leipold and the players, but that’s simply scratching the surface in terms of what they could potentially discuss. Here are some potential conversation topics for the trio of linemen.

photo by: Aiden Droge/Kansas Athletics

Kansas center Bryce Foster prepares to snap the ball against Kansas State in Manhattan on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2025.

Bryce Foster

• In retrospect, what was it like doing both football and track in the spring? Foster was a two-sport athlete at Texas A&M, but the practice schedule made it essentially impossible for him to participate in spring football fully while he was also throwing the shot put. At KU, with football in the morning and track in the afternoon, splitting time was much more of a possibility, even if he was load-managed somewhat by the football coaching staff, ensuring he wasn’t overtaxed.

His work with the shot put clearly paid off, as he returned to nationals for the first time since his freshman season and finished 11th in the country with a throw of 18.96 meters. That may be it for Foster in terms of track and field as he’s now competed in four seasons (and will be an NFL Draft prospect next spring), so he may have some valuable reflections to share on his recent experiences with the sport.

• What is the rapport like along the offensive line? KU had some turnover in this position group last preseason, but the most notable move other than Foster’s entry into the starting lineup (replacing Shane Bumgardner over the course of fall camp) was Logan Brown and Bryce Cabeldue switching sides. This time, the Jayhawks have one new starter already in the fold in Calvin Clements and two more yet to be determined at left guard, where James Livingston and Tavake Tuikolovatu are thought to be the primary options, and at right tackle, with Enrique Cruz Jr. and Nolan Gorczyca. For a group that needs to be in sync, that’s a lot of moving parts, and it could be interesting to learn more about how it all looks from Foster’s perspective in the middle.

photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Kansas defensive end Dean Miller (45) and defensive tackle D.J. Withers (52) celebrate after Lindenwood quarterback Nate Glantz was sacked during the first half of an NCAA college football game Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, at Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kan.

Dean Miller

• How was the post-spring turnover? When KU came back for summer workouts, the defensive end group — a fairly small set of players — had lost one key member in Bai Jobe, who had been with the Jayhawks for less than a year, and gained two more in Alex Bray (Illinois) and Leroy Harris III (Chattanooga). That’s additional upheaval for a group that already lost highly touted DJ Warner, Miller’s backup last year, and brought in Texas transfer Justice Finkley and Kentucky transfer Caleb Redd in the winter, not to mention added incoming freshmen.

Suddenly Miller is the wily veteran of the group, at least in terms of his experience with the Jayhawks specifically, and it’ll be interesting to hear how he’s seen his role change, as well as how he thinks Bray and Harris can contribute this season.

• What’s it like entering the year with expectations? Not from a team-wide perspective, to be clear, but as an individual. Miller’s college career got off to a fairly anonymous start. He began at the junior-college level at College of the Canyons and was essentially a special teamer for KU until he managed to put on a sufficient amount of weight and stake his claim for the starting weak-side end spot prior to the 2024 campaign. Even once he did crack the lineup, it took until about halfway through the year for him to find his groove: 4.5 of the 6.0 sacks that helped earn him second-team all-league honors came in the final six games. The idea of Miller representing his team at Big 12 media days would have been difficult for just about anyone to conceive of at this time in 2022 or 2023. Maybe it feels that way for Miller himself, or perhaps he always knew he would be able to put it together.

photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas defensive linemen, D.J. Withers and Tommy Dunn Jr., celebrate after a recovered fumble against UCF in Lawrence on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.

D.J. Withers

• What is the competition like at defensive tackle? This question is worth asking about any position group this year, as an ongoing narrative developed over the course of the spring that there was a renewed sense of competition on the Jayhawks’ roster with so many newcomers and so few entrenched veterans. But defensive tackle is actually a bit different from the rest in that there are virtually no newcomers.

The technical exception is Gage Keys, back in Lawrence after one year at Auburn, who, granted, was told by position coach Jim Panagos he had to start from the bottom upon his return. Even so, he’s already used to the coaches and the personnel.

The same is true for KU’s other five players vying for playing time in longtime veterans Withers, Tommy Dunn Jr. and Kenean Caldwell, highly promising redshirt sophomore Blake Herold and Herold’s upstart classmate Marcus Calvin. Panagos said in the spring he envisioned Calvin playing about 10 snaps per game this coming season. Those will be hard-won snaps in KU’s rotation if so, since every other player has a strong case for playing time.

• How have his own responsibilities changed under D.K. McDonald? Neither McDonald, KU’s new defensive coordinator, nor basically anyone else in the Anderson Family Football Complex was inclined during the spring to give away too much information about what the Jayhawks’ defensive scheme might look like in his first year leading the unit. There was a lot of discussion, however, about an increased focus on simplicity, in order to unburden players who might otherwise be too focused on thinking about their responsibilities instead of readily fulfilling them.

For Withers, who played under Brian Borland for the first four years of his collegiate career, what does that feel like? From a mental perspective, how is he being asked to think differently and which elements are the same? These questions may not ultimately reveal much about the scheme McDonald wants to implement but will at least give a sense of how his elevation to defensive coordinator has altered the mindset of the KU defense.