Les Miles breaks down Saturday's scrimmage

The Jayhawks used Saturday to go through a scrimmage that lasted over 110 plays including special teams.

The running backs had a good day accounting for 200 yards on the ground. Les Miles mentioned Pooka Williams, Dom Williams, Khalil Herbert and Velton Gardner saying they “all contributed significantly” to the good day on the ground.

Miles said one of the positive things that came from the running backs were no turnovers and no fumbles. The same story went for the quarterbacks and taking care of the ball.

“Stanley and MacVittie threw the ball well,” Miles said. “Locklin came in, made a couple of nice plays, and no interceptions, which is really the thing we want to know first and foremost.”

The Jayhawks head coach said they need to limit penalties. He didn’t like seeing six penalties on the defense and three on the offense.

“Those are things that we can get corrected,” he said. “We'll talk about it and that we must have poise in games to know what to do and what not to do. We’ve just got to make sure that we have poise and don't turn balls over and don't get penalized.”

The status at quarterback hasn’t changed much since the beginning of fall camp. MacVittie and Stanley still appear to be the front-runners and freshman Torry Locklin had a good scrimmage. Miles said they aren’t going to rush into a decision.

“It's just exactly where it's been all camp,” Miles said. “MacVittie and Stanley, both of those guys are playing well, and Locklin came in and had a nice day today. We're getting a number of reps to see if down the road with the new offense, at some point in time, one of these new guys picks it up and suddenly gets on fire. So, we're not making a decision early, and we won't.”

Miles said he would love to have a clear-cut starter even mentioning Patrick Mahomes as an example. With a new offense and several players in the mix they want to see what different players can do.

“When it happens naturally,” Miles said on announcing the starter. “The one thing that kind of mucks up the water is that you come in with a new offense and you know that guy’s going to get it, but he's not going to get it right now. Then the guy who gets it right now is maybe not as good as the guy who, with time, gets it. So, I'm going to take the time that we need to look at these guys, and, yeah, I'd love to have one quarterback, but I'd like to have one quarterback like Mahomes.”

Going into fall camp one position that was talked about needing players to step up is linebacker. That unit lost almost all of their production from the 2018 team.

Following Saturday’s scrimmage Miles called out two linebackers that caught his attention.

“On defense, we had some guys who really kind of showed up for the first time,” Miles said. “Gavin Potter, freshman from out of Oklahoma played extremely well and had a couple tackles. Dru Prox, again, had another really good quality performance.”

Another position where there are several players competing to make the two-deep is cornerback. Miles said it was difficult to break down the corners because they didn’t have everybody healthy during the scrimmage including Corione Harris, who started nine games last year.

“I think the competition at corner is okay,” Miles said. “We got a couple guys nicked-up. Corione didn't play today. I think he's going to be a good player, so there's competition there, but we don't have everybody out there just yet.”