To bolster its diverse backfield going forward, the Kansas football team will look to one player in his first collegiate season and one in his last.
Even with workhorse starter Devin Neal set for an encore after his strong 2022 campaign, Daniel Hishaw Jr. back after consecutive season-ending injuries and Sevion Morrison widening his role as a complementary piece, the Jayhawks can apparently never have too many options for what players and coaches call the “multiplicity” of offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki’s scheme. New this year are sixth-year senior Dylan McDuffie, a Georgia Tech transfer who played under head coach Lance Leipold at Buffalo, and Johnny Thompson Jr., a freshman from Canoga Park, California, who has had coaches abuzz all through fall camp because of how eager he is to learn.
“Even late last night, he shot me a text asking about some of the install that we had going in for today,” running backs coach Jonathan Wallace said Friday. “The kid loves ball. He’s super talented, he’s got really good contact balance, he runs hard.”
Kansas freshman Johnny Thompson Jr. runs through drills during the first day of Fall Camp on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023.
A three-star prospect who signed with KU in December nearly a year after decommitting from USC, Thompson had built a rapport with Neal as early as his official visit to Lawrence.
“I saw myself in him,” Neal said. “I think we have very similar personalities. He reminds me of just myself when I was a freshman.”
Since then, Wallace said, Neal has taken the freshman under his wing.
“That’s something that Devin didn’t necessarily have when he got here,” Wallace added. “Right away, he was thrown in the fire.”
While Neal, the Lawrence native, started eight games and carried the ball 158 times in his first year, Thompson will have at least one year, depending on Neal’s NFL prospects, to learn under juniors Neal and Morrison, redshirt sophomore Hishaw and super-senior McDuffie.
Morrison said the backs make a point of learning from each other about their respective strengths: “We make sure that we tell each other, ‘Ah, yeah, you’re doing this better,’ or ‘Teach me this,'” he said, adding that he personally has put on 8 pounds of muscle in the offseason and has sought tips from Neal and Hishaw about power running.
It could be a long time before Thompson figures prominently into KU’s offensive plans, but by the sound of it, he’ll be much improved by then.
“For a freshman, you know, he doesn’t flinch, he’s very coachable,” Leipold said at the start of fall camp. “He’s going to learn, as we go through this thing, a lot … about how we go through it in that real practice pace. But Johnny’s going to help this football team as well in his time here.”
Dylan McDuffie dodges obstacles during practice at fall camp Aug. 11, 2023.
Dylan McDuffie runs through a drill as fellow running backs Sevion Morrison, Jack Schneider and Daniel Hishaw Jr. look on at fall camp on Aug. 11, 2023.
McDuffie has a much smaller window to contribute entering his final season, but he brings five years of experience, including one season as a thousand-yard rusher at Buffalo in 2021 following Leipold’s departure.
“He brings a lot of passion,” Wallace said. “He brings a lot of leadership. There’s things that I really appreciate about Dylan McDuffie — the way that he carries himself, his routine on a daily basis, he gets in here in the building early.”
Wallace added that McDuffie is conducting himself with a sense of urgency, doing everything he can to make his last year the best one, and “hopefully those same intangibles trickle down to the younger guys.”
“I’m just trying to bring an intensity,” McDuffie said, “and just (be) somebody that is going to play with their heart on their sleeve and go out there and do whatever it takes for us to win and whether it’s carrying the ball, catching the ball, or blocking for other guys in the backfield.”
He may not be high up the depth chart. Wallace said Hishaw and Morrison have been practicing in full. (Morrison has been wearing a yellow non-contact jersey during some practices, including Friday’s, but Morrison said “It’s just a couple things that the trainers want to be sure about, so that’s just to help make sure I’m safe and my teammates know.”) But the team identified a need for an additional hard runner to join the group, and Wallace said that McDuffie fits that role well: “At the end of the day, we have to make sure that we have a stable going.”
Chance Parker/Journal-World photo
Chance Parker/Journal-World photo
Henry Greenstein/Journal-World photo
Henry Greenstein/Journal-World photo