Les Miles and his Kansas football staff have done an excellent job so far on recruiting the class of 2021, and the Jayhawks may be ready to turn over a new leaf.
Poor recruiting and player development have plagued Kansas football for the past decade. The coaching changes every few years certainly hurt the situation, but it’s understandable why Kansas has such a tough time bringing in talent given their lack of success on the field.
It’s a vicious cycle: poor recruiting and development leads to poor play on the field, which leads to difficulty recruiting, etc.
Where previous regimes have failed, Les Miles seems to be succeeding, for now. He and his staff have done an excellent job recruiting Kansas football’s 2021 recruiting class, which ranks No. 45 overall and No. 5 in the Big 12 Conference according to Rivals.
Guys like four-star wide receiver Keon Coleman and four-star Devin Neal are absolutely huge commits for Kansas. Coleman is particular, chose the Jayhawks over Oklahoma, Auburn, Georgia, Miami, Florida State, Penn State, and many other top tier schools. He’s one of Kansas’ highest-rated recruits ever, and it’s exciting to think about how he’ll be impacting the Jayhawks in a few years.
Devin Neal, a Lawrence native and four-star prospect according to 247Sports‘ ratings also chose Kansas over some other local rivals. He had offers from Iowa, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, and Nebraska when he decided to commit to the Jayhawks. Similar to Coleman, Neal could be a huge piece of Kansas’ offense here in a few years.
Given the fact that this is the class of 2021, most of these commits probably won’t make an impact for Kansas until at least 2022 or maybe 2023, but there’s no quick and easy fix when it comes to recruiting. It’s a game of gambling on the future, but yet it’s completely necessary to building a competitive team.
The other piece of recruiting is actually developing the prospects into legitimate Power Five-level players. While Miles and his staff have brought in some highly-rated prospects, many in the class are going to take time to develop into viable starters at the Power Five level.
If Miles and his staff can coach them up, there’s no reason to think that he can’t get the program turned around within the next few seasons.
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