Transfers have helped quality on offensive line

The transfer portal has been good and bad to the Jayhawks. They have lost some good, young players on defense but have gained a lot back since the end of last season.

One position that has improved from the portal is the offensive line. It started in January when Notre Dame transfer Colin Grunhard announced he would attend KU.

Grunhard saw action in several games at Notre Dame and was listed as the back-up on the depth chart. The minute he stepped on campus he would compete for a starting job at center.

After Lance Leipold was hired the offensive line would pick up two more quality players that will factor into the depth chart with Mike Novitsky and Mike Ford.

Last year Novitsky started every game for Buffalo and earned an 83.3 grade from Pro Football Focus, rating him one of the top centers in the country. He was voted first team All MAC.

When Leipold and his staff recruited him to Buffalo he was a tight end and they talked to him about moving to offensive line.

“Mike was a high school tight end, and we made the decision that we're going to recruit him as an offensive lineman,” Leipold said. “Heck it's hard to find tight ends that want to play in line tight end these days sometimes. But telling him that you're going to play offensive line, he's embraced it.”

As a redshirt freshman Novitsky started 13 games for Buffalo. The next season he started every game for and helped anchor a line that led the nation’s second-best rushing attack in yards per game.

“He's got a smile on his face each and every day,” Leipold said. “He's very athletic. He has good feet. He stays on his feet and he's quick. He studies the game and all those things that has shown that he's got a chance to be a pretty darn good one.”

The offensive line will get more help from Buffalo with the addition of Ford, who won the job starting job as a redshirt freshman at right tackle.

Leipold knew they got a good one in Ford, who was under-recruited coming out of Homewood-Flossmoor High in Illinois.

“Mike came out of a spring ball at Buffalo as our starting tackle,” Leipold said. “Another athletic guy who continued to get strong. He hasn't played college football yet, but it didn't take us long last year in the late fall once we got going. We think that we thought we stole one there to be quite honest with you.”

Ford does not have the measurements of the typical Big 12 lineman coming in at 6-foot-3, 285 pounds. In high school he also got looks as a defensive lineman in recruiting and he will bring athleticism to the Jayhawks offensive line.

Leipold said they felt Ford was going to be better than a MAC-type player when they evaluated him.

“Where he plays, he's not the tallest for this conference, but his athleticism is going to show,” Leipold said. “We thought when we were still there (Buffalo), that it was a guy that probably wasn't a MAC player when it was going to be all said and done.”