photo by: Courtesy of KU Athletics

Kansas football head coach Lance Leipold observes during a preseason practice.

Tuesday’s Kansas football media day delivered the largest collection of individual access that I can remember in a single day in all of my years covering the program.

Head coach Lance Leipold and his offensive and defensive coordinators, Andy Kotelnicki and Brian Borland, answered questions for nearly an hour. They were candid about the performances and prospects of those players they were asked about and honest about where things stand in the ongoing quest for production and consistent play.

After that, several KU players — 12 from the defense and 13 more on offense — were available for another two hours.

The result was the opportunity to hear and ask a whole bunch of questions about how things have gone during Leipold’s first preseason camp with the program and where things stand heading into the season opener on Sept. 3.

I didn’t make it to every player, but I did get to well over half of them. And rather than breaking down what each of them said or didn’t say today, I thought I’d throw together a quick recap of the four most prevalent themes that kept coming up no matter where I was or who I was talking to.

Two of them cover the offensive side of the football. Another takes care of the defense. And the last takeaway came from the coaching staff.

1 – This team wants to play fast

What that means exactly remains to be seen, but the vision I got from talking to several offensive players today was that playing fast would be more about purpose than style of play.

The Jayhawks are not going to line up and try to score in two or three plays and 49 seconds. If that happens, they’ll take it, but that is not exactly what playing fast means.

Playing fast means lining up quickly, getting in and out of the huddle, featuring lots of moving parts within their formation and getting the ball out quickly and making strong, decisive reads.

If that delivers a 14-play drive via the dink-and-dunk approach, they’ll take it. If that means they take a quick hitter to the house on the third or fourth play of a series, they’ll take that, too.

But by playing fast, KU hopes to be an offense that dictates the way the game is played. The idea is to force the defense to react to what you’re doing rather than reacting to how they’re defending you.

Kotelnicki’s approach to calling offense has everything to do with efficiency and scoring points. If KU scores a touchdown via a five-play drive that took 2:19 off the clock and gives up a field goal after a 12-play, 8-minute drive on the next series, they’ll still be winning 7-3.

That’s the mindset now. Sure, controlling the clock and possessing the ball would be a nice way to stay in games. But Kotelnicki does not sound like he’s solely focused on winning the time of possession battle. It’s points he wants. And he plans to use multiple formations, packages and players to try to get them.

2 – The quarterback race will and should go down to the wire

We’ve heard that throughout camp and will continue to hear it over the next two weeks.

But I don’t think it’s a gimmick or a ploy to maintain some kind of competitive advantage.

These coaches are very much still evaluating these guys and they seem very content to take all of the evaluation time allowed to make the best decision on a starting QB.

The quarterbacks support that. And it sounds as if they’re all supportive of each other and bought in to the idea that whichever QB gives Kansas the best chance to win is the one they want to see on the field.

No one communicated that on Tuesday better than 2020 starter Jalon Daniels. When asked what winning the job would mean to him, Daniels admitted that it would be a great feeling to emerge from camp as the starter. But then he added a disclaimer that showed exactly where this roster seems to be in terms of buying in to the culture Leipold is trying to create.

“It would definitely mean a lot to me,” Daniels said. “But if it’s not good enough to help us win, I don’t want it. At the end of the day, I want to win. So, if any of the quarterbacks here can play better than me enough for us to win games, I’m OK with that. It’s not about me winning the job, it’s about us being able to win games.”

That’s a strong statement from such a young player — or for any player for that matter — and it did not in any way sound like Daniels simply trying to say the right thing or sound good.

A big part of the culture the new coaching staff has tried to bring to KU is focused on players being selfless and committing to the idea of team over individual.

Daniels (and others like him) is clearly doing that, all while continuing to push himself and pursue individual improvement as fast as possible.

As for the question about who I think will win the job, I honestly don’t know enough right now to say. And I think that’s another indicator of how this coaching staff is taking its time to evaluate the entire body of work of each of the contenders rather than looking to end the race quickly.

Any one of them could be in the lead today and yet could still wind up as the No. 2 or No. 3 QB by Sept. 3. There is still a lot of time left in this competition and these guys are all energized by the fact that the coaches are truly making every day and every rep count.

Kotelnicki said it best when he said they’re looking for consistently good QB play rather than occasionally great. The guy in that room who shows that the most by the time Sept. 3 rolls around will be your starting QB.

That idea certainly seems to favor a guy like Miles Kendrick, who is known for being steady and sound even if a bit unspectacular. But Daniels and newcomer Jason Bean both have more than enough talent and time to show that they, too, can be that type of quarterback for this team.

So much of the success of KU’s QB — and the team as a whole — will be tied to how much the offensive line has improved.

That’s a story for another day because that group, in my opinion and that of many other people, without question is the single most important position for the Jayhawks this fall.

3 – The Buffalo transfers will be big for this defense

I love what I heard today about Buffalo transfers Eddie Wilson, a defensive lineman, and linebacker Rich Miller.

Both players figure to play huge roles on this defense and both will bring a certain level of confidence and experience to the field having played in this system and for these coaches for the past couple of seasons.

Wilson’s comments jumped out at me the most here.

After years of hearing the same this-is-who-we-are message from Leipold and his staff at Buffalo — sometimes three and four times within the same calendar year — Wilson heard it again at the start of camp.

This time, however, the 6-foot-4, 315-pound D-Lineman said the words “hit different.”

It’s not that he was hearing them for the first time or that he interpreted them differently now that he’s an upperclassman. Instead, it has everything to do with what they mean this time around.

At Buffalo, Leipold and company reached the point where the culture had been established and those messages were more a reminder of what was important and what they wanted to be.

At Kansas, Wilson said the words served as a blueprint for where things are headed, and that idea excited him.

Wilson is not one to overpromise. So, he, like most of his teammates and coaches, had no interest in dishing out shock-the-world statements or any kind of prediction for a four- or five-win season on Tuesday.

Instead, he talked about how his path brought him to KU with these coaches to be a part of the solution for a program that has struggled mightily for more than a decade.

“I’m in a position to make history at this program, here at Kansas,” said Wilson, who was originally committed to Boston College out of high school but views the change of plans as a blessing. “Even if it’s not today or this year or next year, the Kansas program is going to be turned around with Coach Leipold and I’m going to be a part of it.”

After Wilson, there’s Miller, a talented and versatile linebacker who Borland said could — and probably would — play all three linebacker positions for the Jayhawks this fall.

That’s what he did at Buffalo a season ago. And his ability to do that here, this year, with a linebacking corps that features mostly unproven players, should be a big bonus for Borland and company.

Miller’s ability to play anywhere they need him will allow the coaches to worry less about developing six, seven or eight linebackers and more about finding two or three more.

That should make for an intense competition that carries into the season and also should allow KU’s other LBs to play off of and learn from Miller the entire way.

4 – This staff is tight and focused on the right things

During Tuesday’s press conference Leipold and Kotelnicki were both asked if they were looking forward to the opportunity to prove that they’re Power 5-worthy coaches by taking over the challenge at Kansas.

Their answers were nearly identical.

“This isn’t about me,” Leipold said. “It’s about getting this pro-gram where it needs to be.”

Added Kotelnicki: “I don’t think it really is anything about us, quite honestly.”

Both went on to say their philosophies that have delivered them so much success throughout the years are only as good as the players who execute them.

And that keeps them locked in on developing each individual in the program — as a player, a person and someone who’s ready for life after college football — to be the best they can be at all times.

“That’s what it’ll always be about,” Kotelnicki said.

Still, Leipold acknowledged that they would not have signed up for this challenge — and he used the word “we” not “I” — if there was not some level of drive to see how they stack up against the best in college football.

“Each and every day, each and every week, we try to prove ourselves on what we’re doing,” Leipold said. “That’s the competitive nature in each one of us. I guess we wouldn’t have taken this opportunity if we didn’t think we were able to get the job done.”

Similar words have been uttered by coaches across the country for decades, at programs that have both won big and struggled, as well.

But the most interesting part about hearing them at Kansas, with this particular group of coaches, is how their actions and teaching has rubbed off on the Jayhawks.

Hearing the players talk about their coaches on Tuesday, you’d think they had been with them for three or four years. Maybe longer.

It’s clear that a deep and meaningful connection already has been made.

That might not mean anything today in terms of the big picture by which success and failure is measured. They still have to get these guys to go out and perform and execute and they still have to win games to convince this fan base that things are different this time around.

But you can’t do that without operating as one group pursuing the same goals in the same manner.

These coaches clearly understand that and they appear to be well on their way to convincing their players of the importance of that approach, as well.