LAWRENCE — Freda McPhail and her husband, Ryan, can be strategic in the way they communicate with their son.

Freda knows how close they are as a family. She understands how much weight she and her husband’s words carry, and how much power they hold. They think things through so, in the end, it’s their son’s decision.

So, when the week of Kansas football’s game this past November against Kansas State came around, Freda didn’t say anything that would influence her son. She just told him regardless of the decision he made, he should take in every moment of that night — look around, feel it, breathe it, remember it. Because, in the back of her mind, that game on Nov. 18, 2023, could be his last home game with the Jayhawks. She didn’t want to get in his head on game day.

See, Devin Neal may not have ever told his parents directly he thought that, but Neal was thinking that and it made sense to Freda he would be. Neal, then a junior running back at Kansas, had starred for the Jayhawks across his first few seasons in college. He’d set himself up for a career as a professional athlete, as someone who’d earned a shot in the NFL, as he helped spark a turnaround for his hometown program.

But while that’s where things were heading, Neal is here in Lawrence this spring preparing for his senior season at Kansas. He’s set to enjoy one more season with the Jayhawks, and one more season with a running backs coach — Jonathan Wallace — who wondered aloud to him the evening of that Kansas State game if that would be it because Wallace wanted to take that moment in with him. There’s more to accomplish, and Neal didn’t want to feel any regret.

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“(Wallace) asked me and, I mean, at that point, I was like, ‘It very well could be,’” Neal recalled about their pregame conversation last fall. “And then, kind of after the game, it really was. I won’t lie to you guys. Like, I was like, ‘I’m probably going,’ after that game. But I spent a lot of time reflecting and spending time with my family and just … weighing the pros and cons. And obviously I wasn’t necessarily comfortable enough with saying I was ready to go. And I just wanted to come back and make this my last run and make it special.”

The buildup

Thrust into action as a freshman in 2021, Neal didn’t wait long to showcase the talent he possessed.

In his second game, Neal scored his first touchdown. In his fourth, he had his first 100-yard rushing game. When Kansas went on to upset Texas on the road later that fall, his stat line left little room for interpretation — 143 rushing yards, three rushing touchdowns, 26 receiving yards, one receiving touchdown.

Fast-forward to his sophomore year in 2022, and Neal picked up right where he left off. When the Jayhawks clinched bowl eligibility for the first time in more than a decade, with a win against Oklahoma State, he rushed for 224 yards and a score and tallied 110 receiving yards. It’s the type of performance that set up the conversation for his junior year in 2023, about if he was prepared to make the jump to the NFL.

But while Freda acknowledged that national buzz around Neal was there, going into the summer of 2023 her son didn’t view things as if that would be his last year in college. She said he focused on personal growth, on pushing the bar he set for himself each year even higher. As he continued to establish himself as one of the best running backs to ever play at Kansas, there was a common refrain.

“I just got to keep going focused,” Freda said Neal would say. “Keep going at it, keep chipping away, keep chipping away.”

There are times Freda will be still shocked by Neal, but the way he handled the season didn’t surprise her at all. She knows her son’s strengths and fears intimately. He’s not someone who’s about instant gratification.

If Neal wants something, Freda explained, he’ll say it out loud. But before he ever makes a decision, he’ll devote time to thinking about it. As he’s said himself, in the end he’ll make sure there’s no regrets.

Even as the season headed toward its conclusion and the reality Neal would have to make a decision about his NFL future grew, that didn’t change. There’s a difference, Ryan explained, between wanting to turn pro and it becoming a reality that it’s an option. But Neal, who’d rush for 138 yards and three touchdowns in a near victory against Kansas State on Nov. 18, 2023, didn’t let the moment overwhelm him.

“Everybody knows that running backs, their shelf life is different, the tread on their legs,” Freda said. “There’s so many things you take in consideration, and it’s — getting in young would be great, right? But I think those were something he thought about, but it was nothing that he stuck his feet in the ground and said, ‘I’m not budging.’”

The decision

Neal’s parents knew before the bowl game that their son would be returning to Kansas for his senior season, but that didn’t make the weeks that followed the Kansas State game any less chaotic or stressful for them.

As Freda explained it, she and her husband are a research-based, analytical household. Translation: they love data. And throughout the decision-making procession, they didn’t have the ability to pull all of the data they would have wanted.

It’s not as if Neal was a quarterback in Heisman Trophy contention. A running back in his position didn’t have it that easy. So, they had to dig, dig and dig.

Freda said they outlined numerous pros and cons. They looked at the last handful of years of running back history in the NFL draft and even analyzed who might enter free agency. There were conversations with Jayhawks head coach Lance Leipold and the team.

“You can only make assumptions on things, what you see, what you think, but there’s nothing crisp,” said Freda, who noted as parents they were cognizant of the possibility if they steered Neal one way that didn’t mean it would work out. “So, it put us out of sorts … because we had nothing that we can just sink our teeth in and say, ‘This makes sense. Without a doubt, you are it.’”

Freda noted that after Neal came up with different scenarios in his head and came to the conclusion he’d return to college, she didn’t jump on that choice and say the evaluation process was over. She told him to take some time and see if there’s any unease. So, that’s what Neal did.

Neal, Freda explained, didn’t want to have the regret of not finishing what he started. He also knew the NFL would be waiting for him. He went on to rush for 71 yards and a touchdown as Kansas beat UNLV in late December in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, helping capture the Jayhawks’ first bowl win in more than a decade.

“There’s some other personal things outside of just finishing what he started that’s important to him, too, from a legacy standpoint, that was part of his pros,” Freda said. “And as parents we supported that.”

The future

There’s a weight off Neal’s shoulders now that the decision is out of the way.

Neal said he can just play football again. This spring he’s focused on all the little things he can improve upon, like pass protection and understanding defenses. He’s enjoying being around his teammates ahead of a 2024 season that carries heightened expectations for the program as a whole.

Wallace has watched Neal approach the spring with the same intent he did when Neal first arrived on campus, and grow to the point where Neal has taken the lead in meetings. Leipold, who felt Neal made the right decision in part because Neal is on track to graduate from college in three-and-a-half years, sees an athlete who knows what can be accomplished at Kansas. Neal is on track to not just help the Jayhawks take another step forward as a program, but cement his legacy at KU — where he's rushed for 33 touchdowns and more than 3,000 yards already.

It’s another weight, in a way, but one Neal is sure to embrace. Freda and Ryan just want to make sure their son continues to have fun. That’s what they’ve always wanted for him anyway.

“Devin told me that this year he wanted everything, and I asked him what was everything for him,” Freda said. “He said … he wants to go as far as he can with his teammates and finish. He wants to silence all doubts and he wants to shatter those records.”

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: Here's why Devin Neal decided to return to Kansas football in 2024