New offensive coordinator and associate head coach Jeff Grimes met with the media after the second day of fall camp. Grimes talked about the competition within the tight end room, the current development of players, and how he hopes to continue the versatility of the Kansas offense. He also mentioned his hopes for Jalon Daniels in 2024 and who is in the mix to start at the center position.

There’s a lot of competition with the tight ends

The graduation of Mason Fairchild, Kansas’ top tight end in 2023, means multiple players are competing for that role in 2024. The Jayhawks return Jared Casey and Trevor Kardell, who both received a decent amount of reps last year, but Grimes said they would still have to earn their role this season.

“The thing that I said in my first tight end meeting was that everybody, and I looked at Jared and I looked at Trevor and pointed at them specifically and called them out by name, ‘including you, Jared, you, Trevor.’ Guys who have played has to earn their reps,” Grimes said.

The competition is prevalent throughout the group, which is a good thing according to Grimes. He thinks it can help prove who the best competitors are going to be.

“Competition finds the best in most people,” Grimes said. “You know, the saying is competition brings out the best in everyone. And I don't know if that's necessarily true. I think it brings out the best in the best competitors.”

One of the players fighting for reps is Leyton Cure, a Division 2 transfer from Fort Hays State. Cure missed the 2023 season with an injury but was second on the team in receiving yards during his redshirt freshman year. Grimes said he was impressed with Cure when he started recruiting in Kansas.

“I had known that he was a high school quarterback and had known just from his reputation that he was a really good athlete, and so began to dig into it a little bit more, talking to a lot of the people at his high school, his family, as many different people as I could about him, and just was super impressed with everything that I saw and really felt like he was someone that was a lot more than what people had given him credit for,” Grimes said.

Grimes thought Cure was underrecruited, partly due to playing quarterback in high school and playing at a small school in Western Kansas.

Breaking down the roster into three groups

Grimes broke down the Kansas offense into three groups. The first is good players with a lot of experience who still need to take another step forward in 2024. He mentioned Jalon Daniels, the running backs, and receivers as members of this bunch.

“Well, for a team to win a championship, your best players have to play great,” Grimes said. “And we need all of those guys to play better than they've ever played. If we're going to win a championship, playing like we played last year isn't good enough. Even though it was a great season, that's not good enough to win a championship.”

The next group is the newcomers, guys who Grimes is still waiting to find out some more things about. He mentioned Leyton Cure, Carson Bruhn, and a handful of linemen.

Lastly, Grimes talked about players who are relatively unproven. He described the bulk of the offensive line as “proven that they’re in the mix but not quite sure if they’re really good enough to help us win games in this league or not.”

Grimes wants the offense to remain versatile

So much of what made the offense great under Andy Kotelnicki was the versatility and multiplicity doing a good job of keeping opposing defenses off-balance. Grimes doesn’t want that to change now that he’s the offensive coordinator and thinks this roster is capable of going even further.

“What's been done here already has proven that they can do quite a bit,” Grimes said. “And I got to give Andy and the other coaches credit for that. I mean, I've walked into a situation where we not only have talent and experience, but there's a system in place that the players know and are able to execute with a lot of moving pieces at a very high level. And so what I'd like to do is just do even more of it.”

The only problem with having a lot of moving parts is the plays can be difficult to run. However, Grimes still wants to run as much of it as they can.

“If you had 75 plays in a game, you would love for every one of those plays to look like you shifted and you motioned and you had misdirection and nobody knew where the ball was going, like, every play looks like a trick play,” Grimes said. “Like everybody goes, ‘Why don't you run more of those?’ Because they're hard. They're hard to execute. There are a lot of moving pieces to those, but you'd love to be able to say that you can do as much of that as possible.”

High hopes for Jalon Daniels in 2024

Grimes kept it simple when describing what he wants to see from the Jayhawks’ quarterback this season. He wants Daniels to continue to be who he is, stay healthy, and lead a team that has championship aspirations.

“My hope would be that he can be the guy that I see every day in practice, the guy that I see every day that I've been here,” Grimes said. “I think he's a guy that's really comfortable with who he is. I think he's a guy that brings a lot of energy and excitement to the team, not just through his play, but just by his personality.

"And I just, I'd love to see him, like everybody, have the opportunity to be healthy and play every down and lead our team to a championship. And I have no reason to think that wouldn't be the case, based on what I've seen so far.”

Who starts at center?

Kansas will have a new face at center for the first time in the Lance Leipold era after Mike Novitsky graduated. The Jayhawks brought in a couple of transfers to compete for the job, Bryce Foster from Texas A&M and Shane Baumgardner from Division 2 Tiffin University. Michael Ford Jr. has also played some center but is probably more likely to start at guard.

Foster, despite having that SEC experience, does not come to Lawrence with the starting center spot locked up. Grimes says Foster still has to prove himself.

“He's got to prove to his teammates that he's the guy who should be our starting center or guard,” Grimes said. “He could play guard, but he's got to prove that he's one of our best five if he's going to be our starting center. He's got to prove that he's got the work ethic, the communication skills, and the leadership necessary to be the guy that's making a lot of the calls and directing a lot of the things for us up front.”

Grimes also said that Baumgardner has improved a lot since arriving last spring. He’s had to make the adjustment from the Division 2 level but has started to gain more confidence.

“I thought he had a solid spring,” Grimes said of Baumgardner. “It looks to me thus far that he's had a really good summer, I think he's made a lot of progress. I see a guy that's playing with a little bit more confidence, just a certainty about what he's doing and a real focus."

One of our best promos is back.

Now, you can get 75% off a yearly subscription in our new promo that will last for the next few days. Follow fall camp, recruiting, and talk with hundreds of KU fans on the message boards.

To take advantage of our promo CLICK HERE