Last spring, before Les Miles was sent packing and long before Lance Leipold knew he would be a top candidate at Kansas, Leipold had the next several months of his life lined up pretty well.
With a talented team returning to Buffalo and players and coaches he knew well in key spots, he would run through spring practice and roar into the fall with visions of trophies, championships and rings in his head.
But then the KU job came open and, in a relatively short amount of time, — and at a weird time to boot — Leipold’s football life was turned upside down.
He moved cities and schools. He had to learn new names and faces. He even had to recruit new coaches and players to join him.
The job may not be all that different. Leipold still believes in a few core values and knows how to build a program. But the challenges are almost all new, and, right now, they’re ever-present.
That has forced Leipold to adjust the way he goes through preseason camp, which began Aug. 5 and runs through next week ahead of KU’s season opener on Sept. 3.
What would have been an offseason full of easy milestones and key dates for installation, position battles, conditioning work and game prep became days where survival was the key.
So rather than saying, “Our safeties and cornerbacks are in a good spot because they’ve picked up this, this and this,” Leipold is still trying to learn as much as he can about the individuals who play those positions and others while bringing them along in their development and preparation for the upcoming season at the same time.
One thing that has helped Leipold stay calm in the middle of all of that craziness is his belief that nothing ever really stays the same even if a lot of the faces remain familiar.
“I think each and every team is different,” he said after last Saturday’s open practice. “I don’t know if there’s pure markers that we go by (to determine progress), but here shortly I’ll have the coaches give me kind of a synopsis of where they’re at in their positions and what they feel and where we have to take the next step.”
The biggest thing he’ll remember when taking in all of that information is that not all players are created equal. And we’re not just talking about talent here.
Sometimes during practice reps, a freshman will be lined up against a fifth-year senior and the upperclassman will get the better of the battle.
Other times it’s a player who’s new to KU and the Big 12 against a returner who has been here before even if his reps and snap count were on the lower side.
Leipold makes sure to remember that while watching every drill and during every second of film study so he can help gain a better, more complete evaluation of exactly where this team is 17 days removed from the season opener.
“There’s a lot of factors that can give you false confidence at times, but also, at the same time, (make you think), ‘Hey, we’re a lot better than we thought we were,'” Leipold said. “We’ve had the conversation of you’re trying to evaluate yourself and yet you have to evaluate who they’re going up against at times, too.”
That dual nature of getting to know his players and learning what they can do and how to push them at the same time has made this preseason camp busier than most for Leipold.
But that jam-packed agenda has helped Leipold and his players and staff focus more on their mantra of getting 1% better every day instead of worrying too much about the big picture and what things might look like in a month, a season, a year or five.
“I think there’s excitement, but it could be a same-song-second-verse type of thing,” Leipold said early in camp. “What we have to do is trust each other. There’s a lot of putting it all together and I am excited about it.”
