Rare is the athlete whose developmental curve is a straight line forward, without stalls, setbacks, even regressions.
Tyrone Miller came to Kansas as a high school recruit from Michigan and was pressed into duty at cornerback right away. He showed a knack for making plays, but lacked the pure speed to keep up with fleet Big 12 receivers. A position switch was in order.
The move to his high school position of safety for his sophomore season created excitement about his future. He showed an eagerness to hit hard during his freshman season, is smart, and has enough speed to play the position. Plus, nobody disputes that he is the team’s best dancer, so that tells you he has the footwork to do the job.
However, playing safety in the Big 12 entails far more than doing it in high school and Miller slipped into a sophomore slump, didn’t have the sort of season the coaching staff expected.
He did have a solid bounce-back junior season, playing better as the season progressed. He’ll need to take another step forward this season, because Kansas aggressively recruited players from junior college to bolster the secondary. Davon Ferguson and Jeremiah McCullough, both natives of Baltimore who were juco teammates at Hartnell College (Calif.), supply depth at the position and competition for Miller, who had eight solo tackles against Texas last season.
Miller played in all 12 games last season and started eight. His experience and the motivation of this being his final year at Kansas could blend to make this easily the best season of a career that started with him leading the team in tackles in a loss to South Dakota State.
