Bowl preview: Spotlighting a pair of underappreciated Jayhawks

By Henry Greenstein     Dec 23, 2023

article image Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World
Kansas wide receiver Lawrence Arnold pulls in a catch against Oklahoma in Lawrence on Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023.

Ahead of the bowl game is a great time to give some shine to players who don’t always get the star treatment.

Here are a couple of Jayhawks who helped the team grow this year and didn’t always get much recognition for it. Both of them have additional eligibility and could figure prominently in KU’s future plans.

Lawrence Arnold

Junior wide receiver from DeSoto, Texas.

Numbers to know: 112 receiving yards at Iowa State in what ended up as the only 100-yard performance by a Jayhawk all season; a 77.0 Pro Football Focus grade, just inside the top 10 for KU players receiving significant snaps on the year.

What Lance Leipold says: “He continues to come up with big catches for us as we know. I think, though, like a lot of guys want targets and catches and that, I think he’s understanding the big picture and how it plays out for all the guys a lot better. And then probably the one that I appreciate the most is, he really knows our offense … We line him up in a lot of different spots and when he’s asked questions, he knows.” — Leipold, the week after Arnold’s big play against Oklahoma.

The lowdown: It’s hard to say that Arnold’s contributions really went under the radar when he was responsible for one of the defining moments of the season and the Leipold era at large — his 37-yard reception from Jason Bean on fourth-and-6 to set up the game-winning touchdown for Devin Neal against No. 6 Oklahoma — and a massive, momentum-seizing, essentially game-winning touchdown a week later at Iowa State.

And yet the all-conference honors haven’t exactly rolled in for Arnold, who got a mere honorable mention. The major players who graded out better than he did on the year for PFF were the top two quarterbacks (Jalon Daniels and Jason Bean), the “Booth Brothers” at running back (Neal and Daniel Hishaw Jr.), a potentially NFL-bound left tackle (Dominick Puni), the Big 12 Conference’s defensive newcomer of the year (Booker) and two shutdown corners (Cobee Bryant and Mello Dotson).

Arnold doesn’t usually get mentioned in the same breath as those players in terms of his importance to the squad. One of the reasons why is that despite being a receiver and snagging the key catches he did this year, he makes some of his biggest contributions in the run game.

Neal always makes sure to credit, in postgame interviews after one 100-yard showing or another, the work that his receivers do blocking down the field, and Arnold is a big part of that. His run-blocking grade of 76.8 was better than any of KU’s starting offensive linemen or tight ends (and No. 4 among Big 12 wideouts).

And the Jayhawks called upon him to do it on 300 snaps, whereas he only got targeted 48 times in the passing game. (He made 38 catches and had two drops.) PFF’s top wideout in the league, Drake Stoops, played about the same number of run-blocking snaps and got exactly twice as many targets as Arnold. The fact that some of Arnold’s most valuable contributions come in this invisible part of the game makes him fly under the radar.

Not to mention that he also became a new father — of Lawrence III — in the middle of the year and still played well throughout.

article imageAP Photo/Justin Rex

Kansas offensive lineman Michael Ford Jr. (54) lines up against Texas Tech during the second half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022, in Lubbock, Texas.

Michael Ford Jr.

Junior guard from Homewood, Illinois.

Numbers to know: 74.9 season-long PFF grade — third-best in Big 12 among guards (behind Kansas State’s Cooper Beebe and Cincinnati’s Luke Kandra), 37th in the nation.

What Lance Leipold says: “Here (fellow lineman Ar’maj Reed-Adams) is playing left guard most of the time, 95-plus percent of the time in a left-handed stance, and then he’s bumped out to tackle and he’s playing right tackle. Different assignments, different footwork, the versatility there — Michael Ford’s done that before for us, he’s played all over.” — Leipold, leading up to the Cincinnati game, on moving around linemen due to injuries.

The lowdown: Ford has flown under the radar on a Kansas offensive line that ranked among the best in the Big 12 this year, but his steady year-over-year improvement — his season-long PFF grades were 52.7 in 2021 and 66.2 in 2022 — was a big reason why the Jayhawks protected all three of their quarterbacks so effectively and, in particular, opened such wide holes for Neal and Daniel Hishaw.

Ford graded out as KU’s single best run-blocking lineman this season and was particularly exceptional in the UCF game, in which the Jayhawks ran over the Knights to the tune of 399 yards.

Linebacker Rich Miller and center Mike Novitsky, who will both play at KU for the final time in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, get a lot of deserved credit for helping establish Leipold’s team culture, since they came with him from Buffalo. It’s worth noting that Ford was a Buffalo transfer, too; he redshirted on Leipold’s final Bulls team in 2020.

Like his entire position group under Scott Fuchs, Ford has plenty to offer in terms of versatility, though he primarily played 397 snaps at right guard and 282 at left guard this year. He spent some time working at center in the spring and spent nine snaps at that position against Missouri State; he could be in line to take over that role next season.

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Written By Henry Greenstein

Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off "California vibes," whatever that means.