While analyzing Kansas football’s development, don’t overlook Katie O’Connor’s efforts

LAWRENCE — When Matt Gildersleeve was asked about Bryce Cabeldue on Thursday, Gildersleeve first highlighted Katie O’Connor.

Gildersleeve, Kansas football’s director of sports performance, had been talking about the physical development of various players on the team. Cabeldue, a senior offensive lineman, is a prime example of how far the Jayhawks’ roster has come in the past few years. And, for good reason, Gildersleeve took a moment to praise the significance of O’Connor joining the program as its director of sports nutrition earlier this year in January.

That’s for how O’Connor has embraced Kansas’ culture, the things she’s done for the players and the ideas she’s volunteered. That’s for the level of buy-in she demands from the players, even if means being hard on them — which Gildersleeve acknowledged is needed sometimes. And from Gildersleeve’s perspective, considering she’s young in her career, she’s only going to continue to improve in her own right.

“Previous staff left it in a good place, and our whole philosophy here is leave it better than you found it, and so she’s made it her mission to try and take it to one step higher and she’s done that,” Gildersleeve said. “So, we’re really happy with her, and I know she’s not satisfied with where it’s at by any means and she wants to keep on growing it and elevating it as well. But I think that is going to be a tremendous part of the continued progression of our program.”

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Here are a few more takeaways from what Gildersleeve had to say as Kansas continued to prepare for the 2024 season, which kicks off for the Jayhawks later this month:

Bryce Cabeldue is in an ‘elite category’ of offensive linemen

Gildersleeve said back in 2021, he talked about how there would be a time Kansas took the field and had a physically imposing edge to how it looked. Cabeldue, according to Gildersleeve, is an example of the development he was talking about. Gildersleeve added Cabeldue has grown a lot physically from that point, when he was playing in the Big 12 Conference at 282 pounds, and as a man, as well.

“Bryce, he’s in that elite category of — I would put him up against, physically, any offensive lineman in the country,” Gildersleeve said about the 6-foot-6 talent. “You’re talking about a guy who’s 318 pounds, 24% body fat, can jump a 34-inch vertical, runs the way he runs, bends the way he bends, has — he’s as good as you’re going to find.”

Caleb Taylor’s progress has been a multi-year process

Senior defensive tackle Caleb Taylor has garnered a lot of praise in recent weeks, and Gildersleeve added on to that. The progress the 6-foot-4 lineman has made physically to where he is now showcases how much Taylor has bought in to the process, and grown as a young man. Gildersleeve noted Taylor “fought us as hard as anybody” when the new coaching staff arrived in 2021, on what the new approach would be, but no longer looks like the 268-pound player set to line up in a road game that year at Texas.

“That’s the part that feels really good, when you look at that and go, ‘This wasn’t just something like, oh, the lightbulb flipped in January and now I’m here,’” Gildersleeve said about Taylor, who is now listed at 315 pounds. “It’s been years that he’s been doing this. And so, to see it pay off and to see him in this position now, that part — you know how rewarding it is for him and that’s what gets me up in the morning. That’s fantastic.”

There was a lightbulb moment for Dean Miller

Unlike Cabeldue and Taylor, redshirt junior defensive end Dean Miller wasn’t on the roster when head coach Lance Leipold started the rebuild at Kansas in 2021. Miller later transferred in from a junior college. But it’s not as if Miller did not end up on his own physical journey.

Although Miller was never someone Gildersleeve questioned when it came to ability or effort on the field, Miller both couldn’t put on enough weight and didn’t put in the work to do so. It took a brutally honest meeting with Leipold for that lightbulb moment to happen, for Miller to buy in. So much of the progress that brought Miller to where he is now, someone who can run at 22 miles per hour while being listed at 6-foot-5 and 235 pounds, occurred in the last seven months.

“What did we not do in maybe to get it to click sooner?” Gildersleeve has asked Miller multiple times.

“There’s nothing you guys could have done,” Gildersleeve said Miller would reply. “I just had to make a decision.”

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: While analyzing Kansas football’s development, don’t overlook Katie O’Connor’s efforts