As Cole Ballard and Isaiah Marshall battle for the starting job, Kansas still has plenty invested in what happens behind them.
That’s where Chase Jenkins enters the picture. The Rice transfer may not be in the middle of the quarterback competition, but Jim Zebrowski made it clear Saturday that KU sees him as a key piece of the room heading into the 2026 season.
Zebrowski has been around this situation before. He pointed back to the early days of the current staff, when the Jayhawks had to deal with sudden quarterback shuffling, including the moment Ballard, then a true freshman former walk-on, was forced into action in 2023 and later started in the Sunflower Showdown.
“What happened the first couple years we were here?” Zebrowski said on Saturday. “Multi-quarterbacks.”
Now serving as passing game coordinator - his fourth different title in six years in Lawrence - Zebrowski said depth at quarterback is essential for a team that wants to lean on dynamic runners at the position.
“I think one of my strengths - it has to be, it has to be this - is to make sure when you have quarterbacks who are dynamic and will run as part of your offense, you have to have depth or you can’t do it,” Zebrowski said. “A lot of programs have faltered because they run the quarterback, have no depth, the next guy who comes in is not running, the whole offense changed and they go backwards. My job is to make sure that if something does happen to one of those two guys, or both those guys, that the No. 3 and No. 4 have to be able to play.”
Jenkins brings the kind of athletic profile that fits that idea. Last season at Rice, the redshirt junior from Houston ran 151 times for 531 yards and five touchdowns. He also operated in a shotgun-based triple-option system that kept the passing volume down; he attempted 172 throws, completing 119 for 1,025 yards with nine touchdowns and two interceptions.
“It’s a completely different world,” Jenkins said. “It’s completely different, a lot of stuff that’s kind of excluded.”
That difference has made the move to Kansas a real adjustment, especially with Jenkins limited for much of spring practice. Zebrowski said the addition of senior analyst John DeFilippo, a former NFL offensive coordinator and Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks coach, has helped ease the workload by giving him more time to work directly with Jenkins and true freshman Jaylen Mason.
“I don’t mean Chase is young, but young to our program, so I hope you guys understand what I’m saying when I say that,” Zebrowski added. “It gives me more time to deal with them. Because I’m telling you, that’s a huge learning curve, especially what we do offensively, verbiage-wise with cadence variations, a lot of things that they’ve never done in high school.”
Jenkins’ path to quarterback has been a winding one. He said he didn’t even play the position until his sophomore year of high school.
“I grew up playing everything else,” Jenkins said.
His time at Rice included a brief move to wide receiver, though injury kept him off the field for much of the season he was supposed to work in the slot. After that, a new coaching staff shifted him back to quarterback in the option scheme.
For Zebrowski, getting Jenkins and Mason ready is not optional. It’s part of the job.
“(Jenkins) played some receiver at Rice, played quarterback at Rice, played quarterback in high school, but … our verbiage is different, obviously,” Zebrowski said. “We expect a lot of the quarterback - pistol, under center, gun, all that stuff.
So I think it’s still processing. So I got to do a great job with him helping him process information and make that happen faster.”
Jenkins said the learning curve has already started to flatten as he’s settled in at Lawrence.
“I’ve been able to really sit down, hone in on everything, especially just taking a step back during spring, I was more so learning because I was kind of limited,” Jenkins said. “I’ve learned a lot since then and I’ve been able to grasp it pretty well.”
And for Jenkins, the role is straightforward.
“For me, just doing whatever I can to help the team win,” he said, “however that comes, whatever form or fashion.”
In Other News...
Kansas Still Feels The Border War That Defined A Generation
For Kansas football fans, the Border War still sits in a painful little corner of memory, the kind of game that never quite leaves because it meant so much in the moment. In 2007, the Jayhawks came in undefeated and ranked No. 2, with a chance to turn an already special season into something even bigger, only to fall 36-28 to Missouri in a matchup that still hangs over the programs modern history.
The loss mattered because it came at the height of a brief rise, before Kansas football settled into years of trying to rebuild that level of relevance. Lance Leipold has spent his time in Lawrence trying to move the program forward and make it more competitive again, but the Border War remains part of the standard by which those efforts get measured. It is still the game many Jayhawk fans remember first when they think about what football at Kansas almost became. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Secondary Is Betting Big On A New Kind Of Safety
Kansas has spent the offseason remaking its secondary, bringing in four new safeties as part of a clear push to sharpen the back end of the defense. Among the additions are transfers Corey Gordon, who has Big 12 experience from Louisville and Baylor, and Christian Pritchett from Georgia Tech. Defensive coordinator D.K. McDonald has pointed to the groups coverage ability and speed as the traits that could help stabilize a unit that needed more depth and range.
Gordon, in particular, arrives with the kind of familiarity that matters in a league where the ball can come out fast and spaces close quickly. He has already started to take on a leadership role with the younger players, which gives Kansas more than just another body in the rotation. The bigger question now is how quickly the Jayhawks can turn those new pieces into a secondary that plays with the consistency and confidence McDonald is looking for. [Read more 🡒]