Pushing back against criticism of individual members of the Kansas football team, head coach Lance Leipold on Monday reiterated that the blame for KU’s early losses to Illinois and UNLV should not be attributed to a single person or cause.
If anything, he repeated, “put it on me.”
Leipold noted that as KU’s offense sputtered in the second half on Friday against UNLV, ending its drives with punts and interceptions, it struggled with penalties.
“Is that a play call? Is that a player? It’s a little bit of everything,” he said. “You’re looking for one answer or two answers in this and I can’t give you that. I wish it’s always that easy. But it’s not, and that’s why you win and lose as a team, and we have to continue to get better in a lot of different ways.”
But while he took a holistic approach to discussing the team’s potential areas for improvement on Monday, ahead of Saturday’s conference opener at West Virginia, Leipold pinpointed a “No. 1 thing we’ve got to try to fix.”
“Right now, I guess the biggest thing is, on offense — if there’s a thing there — we have not responded well when something hasn’t gone right,” he said, “whether it be a turnover, a three-and-out, we’re not responding off of that, as an offense, as a football team.”
As far back as the season opener against Lindenwood, KU followed up a fumble by Quentin Skinner with quarterback Jalon Daniels’ first interception of the year before it eventually found its groove in the second quarter.
At Illinois, the Jayhawks overcame a last-minute pick-6 in the second quarter by responding with a touchdown drive in the third, but made next to nothing of their three fourth-quarter possessions, managing back-to-back three-and-outs before making minimal progress on a potential game-winning drive.
Similarly, against UNLV, Daniels’ second interception of the game led to consecutive penalty-laden three-and-outs. The Jayhawks got one field goal, but after conceding the Rebels’ lengthy go-ahead drive, they once again couldn’t muster much of a two-minute drill and lost 23-20.
Even as the Jayhawks are playing “some of the better defense that we’ve played,” Leipold pointed out, they allowed that nine-and-a-half-minute touchdown drive, “but we spend all the time talking about play calling and stuff like that. You win and lose together.”
While Leipold acknowledged that the Jayhawks no longer possess the same staffing consistency that used to be one of their strengths, when asked about the process of Daniels developing comfort in new offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes’ system he responded in part, “I don’t think there’s any questions in the first half.”
Indeed, Daniels led three straight scoring drives, rushing for a pair of touchdowns along the way, before his interception shortly before halftime began KU’s unraveling.
“I understand the offensive coordinator, besides the head coach, is the most scrutinized position on a coaching staff in college football or football in general today,” Leipold said. “It’s what we both sign up for. But at the same time nobody’s asked a question about our new offensive line coach (Daryl Agpalsa). That hasn’t been asked yet.”
Leipold stressed that the Jayhawks are invariably looking for improvement, regardless of circumstance.
“We’re looking at everything, and we always do, it just gets highlighted when you’re not successful,” he said. “But yeah, are we probably going through a growing pain? Yeah, of some sort, obviously.”
Nick Krug
