On YouTube show, Daniels details severity of back injury, insists on return in ’24

By Henry Greenstein     Jan 11, 2024

article image Chance Parker/Journal-World photo
Kansas junior Jalon Daniels during the first day of Fall Camp on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023.

Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels painted a grim picture of his battle with a back injury in a YouTube interview released Wednesday, describing intense and sudden pain that at times made him unable to walk.

In Daniels’ most comprehensive account of his injury since the back tightness befell him in early August — relayed in an episode of the series “Pucker Up with Joely Live” — the quarterback also described the feeling of alienation he felt from the fans as he saw people question his willingness to play and commitment to KU.

“I sat there and watched everybody turn on me,” he said in the interview. “I didn’t even want to go outside of the house at one point in Lawrence, Kansas. I was just like, if I’m not getting rehab or able to get back right on the field, there’s no point in my face being shown in Lawrence, honestly.”

He reiterated, however, that he never considered transferring to another school; is “finally getting back to throwing the football again, finally getting back to jogging, finally getting back to running, conditioning and everything like that”; and will return to the field in 2024.

“I do plan on being back for the 2024 season,” he said. “I still have to see how this process is going to go, but after talking to doctors and trainers, they do expect me to be back for the ’24 season.”

Daniels entered the season with high expectations and the title of Big 12 Conference preseason offensive player of the year. But he suffered an injury that first came to light after he was absent from the portion of practice open to media on Aug. 7. That day, head coach Lance Leipold gave his ailment the label of “back tightness.”

Daniels said in the interview that it came about in the normal course of taking reps during fall camp. He missed time and the first game of the year against Missouri State. By the Illinois game the following week, he didn’t feel 100% but “somewhere where I can play ball again.”

He excelled in that game, going 21-for-29 for 277 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. He played against Nevada and BYU, but now-infamously got scratched from a road game at Texas on Sept. 30 shortly before kickoff.

Daniels told Joely Live that leading up to the Texas game, he was feeling the best he had felt all season, but in the lead-up he told the trainers, “Something’s not right. Something’s not right at all.”

“After I warmed up, I went inside the locker room and just fell,” he said. “And couldn’t feel any — all I felt was pain. It felt like something was stabbing me, felt like something was going down my entire leg … That’s probably the worst pain that I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

He repeated the leg-related description several times in the interview, noting that at times he struggled to get out of bed or get into his car, and that his roommates would hear him “screaming” when his “leg would actually lock up.”

He noted, however, that doctors connected this leg issue back to his original back injury in fall camp.

The Oklahoma game on Oct. 28 — one before which he was seen warming up in uniform — was the closest Daniels got to playing again after Texas, he said.

“I finally hadn’t felt anything going down my leg again … and then three days before the game, right back again,” he said.

That game, of course, turned into a historic upset for KU led by backup Jason Bean. Daniels said he didn’t want his injury to distract from what Bean was accomplishing in his absence.

“I look up to him,” Daniels said. “He’s one of my brothers. He was somebody, when he first came in, I was able to learn a lot from him. He had a lot of intangibles that you can’t teach.”

Bean concluded his career by leading the Jayhawks to a victory in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, and now Daniels will return as KU’s starting quarterback in 2024. He struck his most confident tone at the conclusion of his interview on “Pucker Up.”

“I will definitely be back this season,” he said.

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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.