LAWRENCE — To listen to Lance Leipold talk about David McComb, is to listen to a head coach talk about a quarterback that fits their system.
Leipold, Kansas football’s head coach, described McComb as a player who had everything you’d want in a quarterback, including leadership qualities. This was earlier this month, after the 6-foot-4 and 210-pound McComb signed as a member of the Jayhawks’ 2025 recruiting class. McComb was someone Leipold said Jim Zebrowski, now KU’s offensive coordinator, fell in love with when it came to McComb’s ability, size and potential.
Leipold acknowledged how important it is to hold the quarterback position group together, given it’s one that can lend itself to a high probability of transfers. There’s only one that’s going to be a team’s starter. But McComb has helped put Kansas in an advantageous position at this spot, and Leipold noted the status McComb holds as a quarterback could have served as kickstart for a domino effect for the recruiting class as a whole.
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“Quarterback is going to be a highly competitive position, obviously, only one gets to play, and you worry about — it kind of puts us back at our number of where we want to be in the room, we always haven’t been there,” said Leipold, who also mentioned how early McComb committed. “We like our quarterback room. We expect it to stay consistent. And, again, to have somebody like David in there and enrolling early and getting a chance to come in and compete and develop is going to be exciting to see.”
McComb, a 247Sports Composite three-star talent out of the state of Oklahoma, shouldn’t be called upon to play much early on. There are a pair of young quarterbacks on the roster ahead of him in Isaiah Marshall, a freshman in 2024, and Cole Ballard, a redshirt freshman in 2024. There’s also a veteran coming back in Jalon Daniels, a redshirt junior and starter for Kansas this past season who has announced he’s returning in 2025.
McComb’s signing came prior to Daniels’ official announcement on social media that he would be returning next year, but the move was important all the same. As Leipold highlighted it helps the Jayhawks build for the future, while also providing depth. Daniels played and started in all 12 games in 2024, but the 2022 and 2023 seasons outlined how important it is for KU to have a quarterback room that has multiple guys ready to step up if needed.
There was talk this fall about the bond Daniels shared with the veteran wide receivers he’d thrown the ball to in recent years. McComb is a part of a signing class that has four from the high school ranks, in four-star Jaden Nickens and a trio of three-stars in Jackson Cook, Bryson Hayes and Tate Nagy. Maybe, in some time, similar stories will be told about this group, which will arrive on campus as a part of a larger group of newcomers that includes a host of players on both sides of the ball from the transfer portal, too.
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: Why Kansas football signed QB David McComb in 2025 recruiting class
