Kansas football coach Lance Leipold wraps up spring ball in 2025
Check out everything Kansas football coach Lance Leipold had to say Friday as the Jayhawks finished up spring ball and looked ahead.
LAWRENCE — Bryce Foster’s arrival ahead of the 2024 season afforded Kansas football a proven center for its offensive line that it could rely upon.
Foster, previously at Texas A&M, came in as a regular starter for a Southeastern Conference program. He’d earned accolades there, before his move to the Big 12 Conference, including All-SEC recognition as a freshman for 2021 and freshman All-America honors for that year as well. And he lived up to that reputation, in addition to finishing his first fall with the Jayhawks as an All-Big 12, second-team honoree.
But while there’s some time between now and the start of the fall of 2025 for KU, a recent report from ESPN outlined it’s not too soon to think about the 2026 NFL Draft. It’s not too soon to think about where Foster fits into that conversation. And while ESPN analysts Matt Miller and Jordan Reid didn’t list Foster as one of the top five centers in that class, Miller described Foster as a player outside of the top five to watch.
“Foster made a huge jump in 2024, which leads me to believe that there’s even more to come in 2025,” Miller wrote. “The 6-5 330-pounder is a mauler in the run game with the agility to make blocks in space. Don’t be surprised to see him paving the way for now-healthy quarterback Jalon Daniels, earning postseason awards and moving up draft boards.”
Miller’s top five went No. 1 Jake Slaughter (Florida), No. 2 Iapani Laloulu (Oregon), No. 3 Logan Jones (Iowa), No. 4 Connor Tollison (Missouri), No. 5 Pat Coogan (Indiana). Reid’s went No. 1 Connor Lew (Auburn), No. 2 Slaughter, No. 3 Laloulu, No. 4 Jones and No. 5 Tollison. Tollison was Reid’s toughest player to rank, referencing injury history as a reason why.
Foster will be expected to start each game for Kansas’ offensive line at center once again in 2025, for a group that’ll look to replace both of its regular starters at tackle. In 2024, he started all 12 games for the Jayhawks. KU will just look for the 12 regular-season games Foster plays this year to lead to a better record than the 5-7 mark it left last fall with.
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He was the 2022 National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.