photo by: Chance Parker/Journal-World photo

Kansas freshman Blake Herold during practice on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023.

During a season in which the Kansas front four has struggled to generate pressure, its best option for getting after opposing quarterbacks might be a redshirt freshman defensive tackle.

Defensive coordinator Brian Borland said as much on Wednesday about Blake Herold, unheralded out of Shenandoah, Iowa, who in rotational action has emerged as one of the Jayhawks’ most promising young players.

“(I) tried to tell him today, I just kind of caught him before practice: Man, that dude is so much improved from the start of this year, even, to now,” Borland said. “I said you can see it. He’s probably our best — he might be our best, just, pass rusher. Particularly on the inside. But he works his tail off, he’s relentless and so over time the results show.”

Listed at 6-foot-3 and 295 pounds, Herold has “skyrocketed” in the KU strength program, as position coach Jim Panagos put it prior to the year. He has also earned a place on the depth chart that he did not possess when the Jayhawks opened the season. Herold has played just 152 snaps in his first year of action, according to Pro Football Focus, but he’s already KU’s No. 4 highest-graded player seeing significant action, behind stalwarts like cornerbacks Cobee Bryant and Mello Dotson and linebacker JB Brown.

“He’s a guy that’s really taken a hold of some things, and he combines that with a great motor, and you start to see the results,” Borland said.

Panagos deploys a slew of defensive tackles, as many as six at times this year, and Herold has seen about 100 fewer snaps than veterans like Tommy Dunn Jr., Caleb Taylor and D.J. Withers. (Also in the mix are Kenean Caldwell and Javier Derritt.) But he says all of those players have helped mentor him.

“I’m always looking up to Caleb and D.J. and Tommy,” Herold said. “Always able to ask them questions, always able to give me some sort of advice, whether it’s football knowledge or technique knowledge or something like that. They’re just really good role models and really able to help me out.”

As for his pass-rush prowess, Herold credited Panagos for his development as well as assistant strength coach Chula Loomis, who “really helps us out with the gloves and stuff like that — just learning how to use my hands inside and out, and just really growing in there.”

Herold has one sack — at West Virginia on Sept. 21 — to his name for the year, among nine overall tackles. The Jayhawks will need him to see additional success in game action if they are to rattle some of the strong quarterbacks leading their upcoming opponents, beginning with Iowa State’s Rocco Becht on Saturday.

The Cyclones, located in Herold’s home state, stopped recruiting him after some injuries he suffered in high school, he said.

When it comes to getting after the quarterback, KU has in recent weeks had to incorporate more blitzing than usual under Borland, with some success. Borland said additional pressure “was as good an answer as we had to anything” against Kansas State in the second half of the Jayhawks’ last game and suggested it could remain in the mix going forward. (Marvin Grant derailed one Wildcat drive with a sack and almost won KU the game with another, though it ended up as an incomplete pass.)

“I think it’s given an offense a little more to think about,” he said.

But if Herold can continue to show off his potential in passing situations, and if pass-rush defensive ends like Dean Miller and DJ Warner can also pick up the slack, it could ease the need for such blitz packages and also make things easier on the Jayhawks’ frequently tested, somewhat injury-depleted secondary.

As part of a rotation, Herold said he likes to get in the game on third down and rush the passer, but that he views himself as an every-down player.

“I’m really comfortable playing in this defense now, so I’m just going to keep growing from here,” he said.