In past years, Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels took on a particular look when he was truly locked in.
Strength coach Matt Gildersleeve called it his “game-day eyes” — presumably because it was most closely associated with some dozen days a year on which the Jayhawks were about to go to battle.
“You see that every day now,” Gildersleeve said, “and you’ve seen it since January.”
Gildersleeve said that Daniels has a “different aura” entering his sixth season of college football, specifically with regard to how he handles his daily work.
“I think he’s always approached the game in an elite fashion,” he added, “but I’m just talking the training, the team techs, everything (in) how he approaches: It is (a) game-like mindset.”
That’s not to say that Daniels’ big personality — Gildersleeve calls it “rambunctious” — complete with all the exuberance and joy, the characteristics that have made him one of the longtime faces of KU’s program, has totally faded to the background.
Daniels, for his part, acknowledges he is trying to find a “happy medium.”
He just knows that at this point, in the final year of his career as what he calls one of the “oldest, youngest” quarterbacks in the college game, his teammates might need something else from him.
“Last year we had a whole bunch of guys who were here when Coach (Lance) Leipold first got here,” Daniels said. “Now I have a whole entire new team, who are trying to learn the ropes while also trying to be successful under the umbrella of doing so.”
As Daniels says, there are not a lot of players remaining from the signing class of 2020, the year he arrived at KU, before Leipold even got to Lawrence. (Defensive tackle Kenean Caldwell and running back Daniel Hishaw Jr. are among the others.) He actually participated in senior day last season in order to join many of his now-departed classmates.
Daniels said he spends every offseason determining how best to help take his team to the next level. In light of the addition of 50 new scholarship players, the ideal version of him for 2025 looked somewhat more earnest.
“There are a lot of young guys who are looking up to be able to find out the way and the ropes of how we operate the program,” Daniels said, “and sometimes it’s not always about being the happy, funny guy. Sometimes you have to show that when it’s time to win, that’s the main goal.”
Redshirt freshman quarterback Isaiah Marshall tries to take lessons from Daniels’ day-to-day preparation.
“I feel like the way that he attacks each day is very good,” Marshall said. “It’s like a pro, like the way he treats his body, the way he’s in the training room a lot, so I try and pick up on that a lot.”
Daniels has previously expressed a desire to make this year the one in which he can “put everything together,” to combine high-quality play with consistent availability in a way he hasn’t always done throughout his career. The 2022 and 2023 seasons in which he regularly turned in excellent performances were marred by injuries to his shoulder and back, and in 2024 he played a full season for the first time but struggled for the first half of the year, which coaches later attributed to his lack of rhythm with his wide receivers.
“I think the biggest thing was him getting through the season,” offensive coordinator Jim Zebrowski said. “That was a big mental hurdle to go over for him, to be like, ‘OK, it’s good, and now it’s my last go.'”
Daniels was limited in the spring following a knee procedure, but took steps to bond with his new group of wideouts over the summer, including an early-July business trip to work out in California: “I’m excited about it,” Zebrowski said. “I think they really worked hard to be like ‘Hey, this is going to be fun. Let’s do it.'”
Daniels is now a full participant in fall camp, as Leipold assured reporters on Thursday.
“The continuity that we missed last fall camp is definitely there in getting people working together, timed up,” Leipold said.
And Daniels will make the most of fall camp, at least if his early arrival time is any indication: “He’s pulling up damn near right behind me as we get in here in the morning time,” Gildersleeve said.
Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World
