Kansas football coach Lance Leipold downplays quarterback Jalon Daniels’ ‘back tightness’
LAWRENCE — Kansas football quarterback Jalon Daniels’ availability came up again, but head coach Lance Leipold downplayed the significance of why.
Leipold noted that while Daniels didn’t take any reps during practice Monday, the junior was present at it. There’s just some “back tightness” Daniels is working through, Leipold said. And there wasn’t some defined timeline on Leipold’s mind for Daniels’ return.
“He’s there,” Leipold said about Daniels. “He’s doing some stuff.”
Daniels isn’t the only player on the roster who isn’t at 100% right now as fall camp continues. According to Leipold, junior wide receiver Luke Grimm has been slowed down by something and junior linebacker Taiwan Berryhill Jr. has been out with a hamstring issue. But considering Daniels’ place as the starter, his status comes with added attention.
Daniels is also coming off a season in which he missed four games with an injury. He wasn’t always 100% healthy at times in 2021, either. So, the effort to work on his body over the course of the offseason, ahead of the 2023 opener, came with the purpose of helping him be able to get through a full campaign.
Daniels, as voted by the media, is the preseason Big 12 Conference offensive player of the year. He’s also on the preseason All-Big 12 team. Kansas is working for a chance at back-to-back bowl game appearances for the first time in more than a decade, and if the Jayhawks achieve that Daniels figures to be a key reason why.
“If I’m saying it a week or so from now,” Leipold said of Daniels’ back tightness, “then we can probably dive in deeper.”
RELATED: KU football 2023 preseason award watch list tracker: Jalon Daniels, Devin Neal recognized
RELATED: Mike Novitsky is back and applying what he learned this spring with Kansas football
RELATED: Kansas football DC Brian Borland aims for defense to be the ‘strong link in the chain’
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas football: Jalon Daniels sits with 'back tightness' injury
