Could Kansas turn to another offensive mind to lead its football program in the wake of David Beaty's firing?

Football Scoop is reporting through sources that first-year Alabama assistant Dan Enos, the Crimson Tide's quarterbacks coach and one of the brains behind Tua Tagovailoa's historic success this season, has risen to prime candidate status for the Jayhawks.

The obvious tie is Enos' relationship with current Kansas athletic director Jeff Long, who he worked alongside at the University of Arkansas. Enos served as the Razorbacks' offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Bret Bielema from 2015-17 before joining the Crimson Tide.

At Alabama, Enos has helped the Crimson Tide to record-setting success on offense this season under Mike Locksley's tutelage as OC. Alabama is leading college football in points per game, yards per game, third-down conversions and explosive plays. Tagovailoa is the overwhelming Heisman frontrunner after 10 weeks and has put together a jaw-dropping 27:1 touchdown to interception ratio in Alabama's spread.

Enos, 50, has been a head coach before, leading Central Michigan to a 26–36 mark over five seasons from 2010-14. The former Michigan State quarterback has nearly three decades of coaching experience.

Kansas 247Sports publisher Scott Chasen expects youth to play a role in the search for the Jayhawks.

“Jeff long mentioned one thing, which is energy,” Chasen told The Morning Blitz Podcast with 247Sports' Connor Tapp. “Whenever you fire a coach, it seems like a general rule of the sport that the same athletic director who hires the coach, the second one is usually a polar opposite in terms of personality, the way they run things. … I get the sense Jeff Long is going to want to hire someone who is energetic.”

Former LSU coach Les Miles is another high-profile named linked to the Kansas opening, but there are varying levels of fit according to national analysts. While he would be a home run to some, CBSSports.com guru Barton Simmons begs to differ.

“I think that Les Miles is a good coach,” Simmons told 247Sports. “That’s an important clarification to make here. I think it’s the wrong hire for Kansas. Let’s look at it this way. If Les Miles was going to be hired at, say, Miami, I bet you he’d do really well. I bet they may even do better than they are this year out of Mark Richt. If he took over at USC for Clay Helton, I bet he’d do really well. … The problem is, he had two hands wrapped around the neck of the LSU offense during his entire tenure. He is not an imaginative coach. He is not a coach that is necessarily going to move the needle outside of a fertile, talented region. He’s not going to go to Lawrence, Kansas, and bring in a ton of really talented prospects.”