Kansas strength coach Matt Gildersleeve likes to stress that his conditioning program adapts to the needs of individual players — as he says, “you meet them where they’re at.”
In the case of defensive tackle Marcus Calvin, when Calvin entered the program in 2023, that meant meeting a player at the point of coming from a high school that didn’t have a barbell in its weight room, as Gildersleeve has recalled on multiple occasions.
“He was wildly underdeveloped,” Gildersleeve added.
That’s not the case any longer. Calvin’s classmate Blake Herold might have garnered the lion’s share of the attention during their redshirt freshman season, and will undoubtedly play a prominent role going forward — but as position coach Jim Panagos said in the spring, their journeys will inevitably be different.
Now, Calvin is the defensive tackle with the greatest offseason improvement in “strength and other things and what he’s doing as a young man,” according to head coach Lance Leipold. To hear Calvin himself tell it, he’s a “completely different body, completely different person” as a result of his work with Gildersleeve.
The 6-foot-2, 300-pound tackle from Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg, Florida, put himself on track for playing time during the 2025 season with his hard work in the spring. Then, at the conclusion of spring practice, he met with Panagos and learned more about how he needed to improve. Panagos said he told him he needed to work on his “blow delivery, be more heavy-handed, play with a lower flat back, just stuff like that.”
“So I told him we have 15 days of spring and then we have like 50 more days before we go to training camp,” Panagos added. “And he really excelled in the plan. He’s stronger, he’s more explosive, more confident and I’m very excited about his growth and where he’s going.”
Calvin said he “was urgent with trying to close the gaps that I needed to close.” That meant working extensively with graduate assistant Zac Sias, a former offensive lineman at Mississippi Valley State, over the course of the summer.
“Everything I needed, whether it was the playbook, whether it was my hands, whether it was my run game, whether it was my pass game, I mean, he just poured in to help me become the whole, complete player I am right now,” Calvin said.
As his weight-room experience — or lack thereof — would indicate, it’s been a long transition for Calvin. The redshirt sophomore was a three-star prospect coming out of high school, as well as a two-sport athlete who also played basketball. But the physicality of college football took some getting used to.
“I played football in Florida, come from the South, I played good football, now, don’t get me wrong,” Calvin said. “But it’s just completely different, not only just the physicality, but the technical. And the things that some players can do with their bodies (are) honestly outright insane, you feel me?”
He said he had to realize that each player has his own distinct skill set.
“Like a lot of players and stuff I was watching when I was in high school, trying to compare myself to them, and I was like ‘Man, why can’t I do this, that and the third?'” he recalled. “And I realize now, sometimes you’re either a God-gifted talent or sometimes things you cannot just coach … Everybody has their own role. I think that’s the biggest difference right now.”
Calvin’s role should be enough to place him KU’s interior rotation this coming season, after Panagos said in the spring he was on pace for about 10 snaps in a given game. Calvin said he hasn’t necessarily shifted his mindset and continues to work to get better. But he does see things from a less insular perspective.
“Now I just realize that I’m working for a bigger cause,” he said. “I’m playing for not only myself, not only my family, but I’m playing for the whole KU football. So now I got to realize that little things matter, I got to know my playbook, I got to get in the plays, I got to help the younger guys out. I got to do everything that happened with me for other people, like pour into people how I got poured into.”
Panagos said he feels KU has the six players it needs at defensive tackle, “and now it’s my job to put them in position and it’s their job to make plays.” The veteran unit includes Calvin joining Tommy Dunn Jr., D.J. Withers, Herold, Kenean Caldwell and Gage Keys.
Kansas redshirt freshman Marcus Calvin poses for a photo during the first day of spring practice at the practice field on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Lawrence.
Chance Parker/Special to the Journal-World