Kansas football picks up ‘D’ pace

By Matt Tait     Oct 7, 2011

With Big 12 offenses playing so fast these days, the Kansas University defense has made a couple of changes to try to keep up.

The first has to do with shortening the time it takes to the get the calls in from the coaches to the field. According to defensive coordinator Vic Shealy, the best way to do that has been to limit the calls to one word.

“That’s what we’ve been moving toward,” junior safety Bradley McDougald said. “Coach Shealy has done a great job with concepts, so he’s breaking the defense down and making sure it’s just one word coming in to the defense. The only thing is, for a team like Oklahoma State, we’re gonna have to get the calls in a lot faster.”

Although changing the system mid-season might seem like a bit of a challenge, several members of the KU defense said this week that the new way of doing things was already second-nature.

“We practice it so much that it comes sort of by habit,” sophomore cornerback Tyler Patmon said. “So when we get that call from the sideline, it’s just kind of a habit to get it across the field.”

Added safety Keeston Terry, a red-shirt freshman who is preparing to play just the eighth game of his career Saturday: “Actually, it makes it a lot easier. You get the play calls in a lot faster with one word. That’ll give us the coverage, the front, everything like that.”

Terry also said he thought the defense had adjusted quickly because it had dealt with one-word calls in other schemes in the past.

While the play-calling aspect takes care of KU’s preparedness on the field, the Jayhawks turned it up a notch in practice this week to help prepare the game plan. Instead of playing solely against the scout team, as it does most weeks, the KU defense spent time going against its first-string offense, a unit that, like Oklahoma State, likes to play up-tempo.

“We go against ourselves because our offense is capable of doing those types of things,” KU coach Turner Gill said. “It gives our players a more game-like type of atmosphere as far as what they (OSU) will do versus having our scout team.”

While KU quarterback Jordan Webb is not Brandon Weeden and junior wide receiver D.J. Beshears is only a fraction of the size of Oklahoma State star Justin Blackmon, the KU offense has been productive and efficient throughout the season. Conventional wisdom says that when playing a high-powered offense, one of the best ways to stop it is by slowing the pace and trying to keep that offense off the field. Although the Jayhawks may mix in some of that, they don’t plan to change who they are.

“That’s a part of the strategy,” KU center Jeremiah Hatch said. “And that’s with any offense that’s good. I imagine they want to keep us off the field because I consider our offense to be one of the best in the country.”

One thing that has helped KU prepare for the Cowboys this week has been the team’s familiarity with Oklahoma State’s personnel.

“Everybody tweaks something here and there,” Gill said. “But 90 percent of their stuff we know what they’re going to run. But they’re going to execute. They still execute their game plan.”

While the Cowboys like to run and gun, Shealy said some of what they do is an attempt to get the defense on its heels.

“Just because they line up fast doesn’t actually mean the ball’s snapped fast,” Shealy said. “They do that to get kids in conflict and panic. They line up fast and get you set, and then the quarterback backs off, but now you’re pegged. We may be playing man, and we may be down, but when they back off to change to a man-beater route, our kids are scared to death to look back to us for a different call because the ball could be snapped at any time.”

While all of those little battles can make a game mentally draining, the Jayhawks said facing teams as talented as sixth-ranked Oklahoma State is what makes playing in the Big 12 so great.

“You gotta love these games,” junior cornerback Greg Brown said. “You gotta know that everyone’s got the spotlight on to see what you’re gonna do against the top players in the nation, to see if you’re one of the top players in the nation, as well.”

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Written By Matt Tait

A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.