By now, plenty has been made about the variety of skills that KU running back Yasin Willis possesses despite being one of those guys who looks like a pure bruiser.
But would you believe that one of the most important things that shaped Willis’ game at running back was the one year he spent playing offensive tackle?
Nine years ago, at age 12, an already-big Willis was moved up from the 12-year-old team to play with the 13 and 14 year olds for the second half of his middle school season.
By that time, the older club already had established who its running backs were, so they stuck the big kid with good feet on the offensive line to help them out.
At age 11, Willis was a running back. When he turned 13, he returned to taking handoffs. But for this one season, it was life on the line. By his own admission, he hated it. But he didn’t hesitate to give it all he had.
“I played it for one year,” he recalled during a spring interview with R1S1 Sports. “I played right tackle. I didn’t like it at all. But it’s football. When coach asks you to go somewhere, you go do it.”
So Willis did. Fairly well, too.
He played about five games with the older team and split reps with another teammate at right tackle.
The offense consisted of plenty of both run and pass concepts, so he got a full taste of what playing in the trenches actually took.
After each game — and, most days, each rep — he came away with a greater understanding of the game as a whole, not just playing O-Line or running back. He said he carried that with him into the rest of his playing days and continues to think about it today.
“You really don’t notice how much they work until you do it or you watch the film,” Willis said of the offensive linemen. “Even now, when we’re done with practice, I try to tell my guys, ‘Yo, y’all boys did a great job today.’”
When asked if any of his teammates back in middle school ever said similar words to him or if he had any other fond memories of playing offensive line, Willis nearly started laughing before he even spit the answer out.
“Absolutely not,” he said with a full-body laugh. “I don’t even try to think about those days.”
The next year, he returned to running back and that has been his home ever since. He appreciated stepping away, even just for half a season, because it really made him appreciate the finer points of his craft and position.
“I was happy,” he said of returning to the RB room as a 13-year-old. “I just wanted to get to it. I like scoring touchdowns. It was like, ‘I’m home.’ There was way more appreciation for it for sure.”
That appreciation has continued well into his time as a Jayhawk.
There’s competition here. And Willis knows that he won’t be the only running back carrying the rock this season. Rather than letting that bother him, he said it fires him up.
See, this season — his last in college — isn’t just about him. He likes that other players in that room have the same type of ugency and that the team, as a whole, has operated with the same type of hunger that he has.
“The whole room has been getting better week by week,” he said. “So we want it to make it a goal where it’s like, these guys is ruling. It looks like nobody came out of the game because we all starters.”
KU’s preseason camp will open next week as preparation for the season opener versus Long Island on Sept. 4 begins full bore.
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