[2024] [Kansas Jayhawks] blond: The Changing Times for QB Tyler Summers

[Bundy]

March 1, 2024

It's been a rough few seasons for the Kansas Jayhawks quarterbacks room, particularly the initially-widely-hyped Tyler Summers.

Summers, a redshirt junior who has been on campus the past three years, spent his first season adding that redshirt to his class year name. The 4-star QB spent much of the year in a polo or sweatshirt on the sideline, watching Kansas juggle between Ian Morgan and Jeff Maeda at QB, in a season that ended at 5-7. 

For 2022, Summers came in as the starting QB, excelling in one spring game and looking horrendous in another, though that was brushed off by the media as "freshman jitters." And then three, touchdown-less games, with more than a handful of turnovers, came and went. And Summers found himself benched, with the Jayhawks eventually going 9-4 and winning a bowl game. 

...it's all downhill from here.

And then 2023 happened. Summers was again penciled in as the starter at the beginning of the year, with no real on-roster competition for the starting role. But there was growing unrest in the KU fanbase, as the three games, with ZERO touchdowns, the season prior had soured many faithful, and confidence level in the QB room was at an all-time low. Summers played "okay", he wasn't winning games on his arms or legs, but he wasn't losing them, either, at least at the beginning of the year. But as the season continued on, the lack of downfield passing frustrated the first actual star player in KU history, TE Alex Atkins, though things with Atkins remained behind closed doors. But things between Summers and Kansas head coach @Bundy were not so private. 

The Jayhawks have a very tight control on media access to their program. So when the Jayhawks beat riders began to publicly dismantle Summers' performances, ability, etc, it could only come from the top. Coach Bundy is notorious for his love of tight ends, and the lack of getting Atkins, or then-highest rated recruit in KU history Steel Blue, involved, clearly rubbed the coach the wrong way. Things continued to fall apart, with the coach turning to SR ex-PR/then-RB2 Aaron Diaz as QB against the Oklahoma Sooners, in what many considered a pivotal game for the Jayhawks. And Diaz was a miserable disaster. Kansas didn't even make their coaching staff available after the game, perhaps suggesting that the QB switch came from boosters rather than just being up the the head coach. Summers was inserted back into the lineup afterwards, and helped lead the team to a 7-5 season with wins over Kansas State and Missouri, satisfying any boosters enough to prevent the coach from being outright fired, and the QB from retiring from football. The team followed it up with a bowl win to close the year.

These b*tches want Nikes...

As the NIL and transfer portal gain notoriety, things are quiet in Lawrence. There's growing buzz that coach @Bundy needs to develop a passing-minded game, especially with the bevy of tight ends he's brought to Lawrence through recruiting. With the Big 12's expansion, it's become increasingly important that the team stay relevant and on the radar. Texas and Oklahoma are gone - there's no longer an "excusable" loss to many who follow Kansas football. So there's a waiting game on whether to financially support this coaching staff, or spending the cash to bring in a rising coach from a less prominent conference, perhaps an @Ewade of Utah State, or an @Ape from NIU. The seat is on the burner, to say the least.

For Summers, he always dreamed of signing that "big deal" as a kid. A multisport athlete in Weaver, Alabama, Summers played basketball, baseball, and of course, football growing up, and daydreamed of signing a 10 year/$701M contract, signing the endorsement deals, etc. "The fame, the glory, the girls," he notably quipped to a local news reporter following a playoff win during his junior season of high school basketball. 

You ain't a kid no more... we'll never be those kids again.

Summer's not as long as it used to be...

But this season's benching was a massive blow to Summers' confidence. He no longer walked through the halls or training rooms with a cocky swagger, he came with sunken eyes and clear despair. 

"Getting benched for a second time, it was eye opening. I had to be solemn and support Aaron through the week and my other teammates, but it was the start of some massive soul searching." 
"I broke up with my girlfriend - errr, I think she broke up with me. She said something about taking a break, but 'if things were meant to be, we'd end up back together', or something. It didn't console me one bit, and I got hammered and sent a bunch of texts I didn't mean, although I guess if I was repressing those thoughts, perhaps I did actually mean them." 

Summers had been with his girlfriend since his senior year of high school. "I think I was jaded. It seemed like everything was coming together for me, I was excelling in sports, I was going to Kansas to play football, she came into my life, and her family had welcomed me like I was their own, which was a struggle for me in my own home life. Everyone - my classmates, my teachers, her - kept saying I was going to accomplish 'big things', that you can't 'dream too big.'" 

Every night f*cks every day up. Every day patches the night up.

"'The sun still rises every morning - it hasn't failed to yet.' That's what he told me," Summers says of his breaking the news to perhaps the unlikeliest of comforts: coach Bundy. "I said I wanted to quit football, I wanted to go back home and try to work things out with her, and he made me sit down in his office. He stopped watching practice film, turned it off even, and told me such a relatable story of his own experiences." 

"I swear the man hated my guts, I mean this was literally the week after he'd benched me for the Oklahoma game, and here I was, breaking down and bawling my eyes out to him since I had no one else. He didn't pressure me to tell him anything else, he said I could even take some time away from the program if I needed to, but he thought that quitting for the reasons I was, was going to end up hurting me personally long term."

"It hurts still now, but he told me 'scars will heal but were meant to bleed.' But I could do more damage to myself psychologically, and for my future, if I just gave up on what I ended up figuring out was truly important to me."

"He sat there in his office with me through the night, we talked over all sorts of things, he showed me a bunch of programs through the university, and otherwise, I could get myself into if I needed them, and we ended up just listening to music for hours without saying much."

"I don't think I went back to my dorm until 7AM. The sun was coming up, but I didn't go to bed right away, even though I just wanted to crash. Instead I listened to this album he showed me from a long time ago, and it was healing and I just listened to it over and over until sleep finally took me."

Be yourself and know that's good enough. Rely and trust on your own decisions, your own beliefs.

Is Tyler Summers just another college-aged kid who has "discovered enlightenment" while at university, or has he actually turned a new leaf? 

"My whole life, I feel like it's always been a rush of emotions, and I've never had time to just, think. I always thought I was going to get whatever I desired, and I think that was a red flag about me. I thought this was a fairytale, that life was just a fairytale and I don't know that I applied myself like I should." 

"I don't want to classify my ex as 'the one that got away', because if she was the one who wanted to 'take a break', or whatever, she was clearly doing it to better things for herself, not for us. I think I was caught up. 'I was gonna make the pros", "I was gonna have this happy closing credits ending and get married' and whatnot, but there have been better players, even in just the Kansas program, like Bene' (Humber), or Ziggy (Ezekiel Sands), who I thought were gonna be all pro NFL stars while playing with, and instead they barely sniff a practice squad. They're much better players than I. Better men have lost their relationships as well. And here I was, not putting my 100% into myself."

Time will tell if Summers has improved his game enough to eventually make the pros, and there's certainly added heat in the QB room with the addition of hand-selected, pure passing recruits of Joseph Perkins (2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐) and Jeffrey Eagle ('23 ⭐⭐⭐⭐). But it seems that Summers has mended his relationship with the coaching staff, at least for now, through adversity, and with Kansas mainstays like Alex Atkins, Marcell Maysonet, and Jose Moustakas leaving the offense to try to make it in the NFL, this could very well be his chance to make it his team. The next steps will come with the lead in to spring practices and the spring game. 

[tsweezy]

How sad, hope he gets some more touchdowns and babes

 

also, Bundy has lost control of the Kansas boosters?!?

[Bundy]

14 minutes ago, tsweezy said:

also, Bundy has lost control of the Kansas boosters?!?

👀