Unlikely American football player Raich could earn time in KU’s defense
By Henry Greenstein Aug 7, 2024
article imageChance Parker/Journal-World photo
Kansas junior Alex Raich runs through drills during the first day of Fall Camp on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023.
Alex Raich’s parents haven’t seen him play football since he came to the United States on his own to play safety at Golden West College in 2019.
They’ll get their chance this year, he told reporters on Tuesday, and it’ll be well timed because they’ll get the opportunity to watch a Kansas team on which Raich could be playing a key role.
“My dad and my mom (are) huge fans of the sport and of me, obviously, so it means a lot,” he said.
Raich has been buried on the depth chart at linebacker — namely, at the hybrid Hawk linebacker spot once occupied by Craig Young — but with Young’s graduation, he and Jayson Gilliom are poised to see plenty of time filling that role in KU’s base defense.
“I’m just really excited, man,” he said. “That’s what I’m here for. I’m trying to help the defense and help the team get some wins.”
As position coach Chris Simpson put it, “Alex is really going to get probably his first shot at any meaningful type (of) snaps.”
“Coming to us from junior college and whatnot, the game was a little fast for him,” Simpson added. “It’s kind of slowed down. He’s as physical as any of the guys that we have, which showed itself in the spring and it’s continued to do that this camp. So he’s going to be able to help us in that role.”
Simpson elided quite a lot with his “and whatnot.” Raich is from Chur, Switzerland, where at age 12 his friend’s brother was playing American football and took him out to a practice, beginning his years-long involvement with the sport in a country where it isn’t so prominent. His favorite player, per his KU profile, was Aaron Rodgers.
“It’s definitely a lot smaller, different,” he said. “Football ain’t that big, football ain’t that important like it is out here. We got different sports we focus on.”
In his home country, Raich played for the Calanda Broncos football team before he moved to the U.S. to play junior college football at Golden West — again following in the footsteps of a friend who had taken the JUCO route.
“It’s definitely hard,” he said. “Especially like friends and family, you miss those people, but I think you just got to have your goal in front of you and then just go straight in for that.”
Raich tallied 45 tackles as a freshman at Golden West in 2019 and 26 more with an interception and a fumble recovery in 2021. That was enough to get him a chance at KU, where he arrived shortly before the 2022 season. He cited the “very familiar” and friendly feeling he got from the coaches as the justification for his choice.
Raich worked his way onto special teams late in the 2022 campaign and then was a consistent member of the Jayhawks’ kick-return unit in 2023, earning just over 100 snaps across the two seasons, per Pro Football Focus. He played his first three downs on defense at Cincinnati last season.
“We had good players here in front of me, like Craig Young,” Raich said. “We had people like Rich Miller in the linebacker room that really helped us, helped understand the defense, helped understand playing on a different level, the D-I level.”
As he noted, this is the year that the rest of the linebacker room will need to pick up the slack — and more than ever before, now that he’s a redshirt senior, that includes Raich.
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