These standouts could have left KU’s struggling football team. Here’s why they came back
There was a moment, Daniel Wise says, when he believed he wouldn’t be returning to Kansas for his senior season.
The defensive lineman had received all the information he needed. KU’s coaches, from material they’d gathered, told him last winter he’d likely be a mid-round selection in the 2018 NFL Draft.
“I thought, ‘It looks good. My options look good. I can possibly do this,’” Wise said.
That feeling didn’t last, however.
Wise started talking to family members, who convinced him he shouldn’t be in a hurry. There was his dad, Deatrich Sr., who’d played in the NFL in the 1980s, and his brother Deatrich Jr., a current member of the New England Patriots.
Their thoughts, in part: Why not stay one more year, and get your degree? And why not try to improve further to increase your draft stock?
For Wise, though, there also was something else pulling him back.
“Possibly a lot of people in my shoes (would’ve left), but I don’t think there’s a lot of people in my shoes,” Wise said. “A lot of people aren’t trying to swing their program around, and that’s more important to me.”
If KU football has a breakthrough in 2018 — if the Jayhawks exceed expectations and put their historic struggles behind them — it’ll likely be thanks to the unwavering commitment from a pair of team captains who easily could have given up on the program.
That includes Wise, an All-Big 12 player last season, and also linebacker Joe Dineen.
“Those two, with their actions, proved that when they say that KU football is important to them, they mean it,” KU defensive coordinator Clint Bowen said. “Their actions showed it.”
Dineen, after leading the nation in solo tackles per game, had two options that could have led him away. He could’ve graduate-transferred to get immediate eligibility at a different Power Five school, though the Lawrence native said he never even considered that.
He also had his own NFL decision. Dineen’s draft projection wasn’t as optimistic as Wise’s — coaches told him he’d likely be a seventh-rounder or undrafted — and Dineen took a few days before making his decision.
“My best friends are here. I don’t think personally, I was really ready to get up and leave this place,” Dineen said. “Just in the state that we left it in, I feel like it was important for us to come back and try to turn the tide.”
Though Dineen doesn’t want to talk in clichés, he says it’s the best way to explain the biggest reason for his return.
Fans often hear about players giving “blood, sweat and tears” to a team, but for Dineen, that’s the reality of his five years at KU.
To leave now? Perhaps when all that work might just pay off with the best memories of his career?
“We’ve put in so much, and we didn’t see the results,” Dineen said. “We have one more opportunity, so why not go and jump at it and really try do something with it?”
Even if it’s not clearly seen by the outside world, Wise sees something special ahead with the 2018 season as well.
Defensive line coach Jesse Williams could sense that when he received the January phone call from Wise, with the player telling him he was coming back for one more season. Williams admits he let out a scream into the phone.
“We were happy as hell,” he said of the coaches.
In many ways, Williams sees Wise’s path as similar to his own.
Williams left a good job at Ohio in 2017 for an opportunity at KU. Wise — a Lewisville, Texas native — also has become invested in the program with each additional year on campus.
“At the end of the day, we just kind of summed it up as unfinished business,” Williams said. “We haven’t done the things that I came here for, that he’s come here for. I think from Coach (David) Beaty to Coach Bowen to myself and him, I think we’re of the same mindset.”
Bowen, for his part, knows exactly the type of season Wise is chasing in his final year.
Though Bowen enjoyed his KU playing days in the early 1990s, he admits the class before him always appeared to have more fun. That group — it included Keith Loneker Sr., Gilbert Brown and Chip Hilleary — began as a 4-7 team in 1989 before ending their careers as 1992 Aloha Bowl champions as part of an 8-4 squad.
“Out of the guys I’ve been around at KU, that’s the most prideful group, because they know they did something,” Bowen said. “I’ve told these kids about that all the time, and Daniel believes that kind of stuff and wants to be a part of that.”
Dineen, much like Wise, felt a bit of responsibility pulling him back to Lawrence. His brother, Jay, is a freshman linebacker with the team, while younger brother Jax also is a potential Jayhawk as a high school senior with a scholarship offer.
Joe, then, has more at stake than his own legacy. He also could be helping to set the future for his family.
“It’s more to leave this place in a better place than we found it,” Dineen said. “We owe it to the program, we owe it to our coaches and the other players to really give it everything we’ve got. This is our last shot.”
The biggest reasons for optimism with this year’s Jayhawks start with Wise and Dineen. Both were preseason first-team all-Big 12 selections, with the potential to be even better in their final campaigns.
For Wise, that means continuing to sharpen his pass-rush skills. Dineen, meanwhile, is working to improve in coverage, hoping to add in an interception (or two) to a 35-game career without one.
The bigger picture, though, will be team results. The two, more than anything, are ready to win.
Williams believes it can happen, wanting to see it especially for a pair of seniors who have “been through every dark day” the past few seasons.
“It’s one thing to see (success) from afar and go, ‘I was a part of the building,’” Williams said.
“But it’s another thing to have your feet in as you break through.”
This story was originally published August 15, 2018 at 5:30 AM.