Woodling: KU football not half bad at midpoint

By Chuck Woodling     Oct 5, 2004

Five games down and six to go. Halftime of Saturday night’s collision with Kansas State will mark the official mid-point of Kansas University’s football season.

No reason to wait until then, so here’s an unofficial mid-season look the Jayhawks in a nutshell: Opportunistic defense, conservative offense, shaky kicking.

Saddled with one of the toughest schedules in the country — one publication rated it THE toughest — it’s not a stretch to say the Jayhawks could be a surprising 5-0 at this stage. Instead, KU has dropped three in a row by a combined total of only 10 points.

Most of the blame for the three losses has been heaped on an offense that has been unable to generate the big play or the key third-down play.

It’s true the offense has been unspectacular. Yet the noticeable improvement on defense owes a lot to the offense. That much is obvious when you check the possession-time chart and the number of plays generated. Only a couple of Big 12 teams have maintained possession or compiled as many plays per game as the Jayhawks.

KU is averaging 77 plays a game. In contrast, last year’s offensively potent Tangerine Bowl team averaged about 69 plays a game.

More evidence of the Jayhawks’ penchant for ball control can be found in the passing stats. Kansas has the second-best passing offense in the league — behind Texas Tech, who else? — but the Jayhawks are dead last in the league in yardage gained per pass at 5.5.

By now we know coach Mark Mangino is committed to sophomore Adam Barmann as his quarterback for now and the future. Although no threat to run, Barmann clearly has a major-college arm, a stage presence that belies his tender years and uncommon durability.

Surely Barmann could throw deeper than he does, but that isn’t the game plan. By throwing short, the Jayhawks not only maintain ball control but lessen the potential for sacks. Foes are averaging only about a sack a game, a small percentage considering KU is averaging 43 aerials a game.

Curiously, Barmann has the lowest pass-efficiency rating among the Big 12’s starting quarterbacks. His 108.08 rating ranks 91st nationally. I don’t think he has been that bad.

Barmann is completing nearly 55 percent of his passes and has more TD passes (nine) than interceptions (six). If you ask me, his low yards-per-completion average is weighing too heavily against him.

As the Jayhawks’ offense leans closer and closer toward becoming more Texas Tech-ish, look for Barmann to become more and more proficient. Now if only KU’s receivers were more consistent. The closest Kansas has to a go-to receiver is Brandon Rideau, and no one ever has called the slender senior glue-fingered.

As noted, the offense has helped the defense, but so, too, has an influx of talent — notably cornerback Theo Baines, safety Rodney Harris and end Jermial Ashley. Throw in the return of Travis Watkins at tackle, the maturation of outside linebacker Nick Reid and the move of Charles Gordon to a corner, and KU has a defense that actually can make plays.

Kansas leads the conference with 17 forced turnovers, including a league-high 11 pass interceptions.

Unfortunately, the multi-talented Gordon cannot play both ways. Last year, Gordon led the Jayhawks in receptions, but he has plugged a defensive weakness noticeably. Did you see his two interceptions against Nebraska? Both were plays a lesser athlete could not have made.

It’s evident to me the Gordon switch has had more of a positive effect on the defense than a negative effect on the offense. Besides, he still logs some duty on offense from time to time, often with dramatic effect, although not Saturday at Nebraska, when Barmann overthrew him on what looked like a sure go-ahead late TD pass.

That Barmann-Gordon call came on fourth-and-long from a spot where Mangino could have opted for a field goal that would have, if successful, cut the Huskers’ lead to 14-11 with plenty of time still remaining.

But when you consider KU’s kickers already have botched more field goals (seven) than many teams even have attempted, you hardly can blame Mangino for defying those fourth-and-long odds.

Still, you have to believe that one of these days, if the short-passing game is clicking, if a rested defense is forcing turnovers, and if the Zodiac favors the kickers, Kansas is going to fire a shot heard around the world.

Woodling: KU football schedule unresolved

By Chuck Woodling     Nov 25, 2003

A little bit of everything you wanted to know about Kansas University football …

Opponent Wanted: After back-to-back years of 12-game schedules, an 11-game slate will return in 2004, and the Jayhawks still are looking for an NCAA Division I-A foe. KU has non-league games against Tulsa (Sept. 4) and at Northwestern (Sept. 18), and is trying to fill the Sept. 11 slot.

“We really can’t schedule a I-AA school because we can’t count that toward bowl eligibility next year,” associate athletic director Jim Marchiony said.

That’s because KU is counting this year’s 41-6 victory over Jacksonville State, and I-AA wins can be used for bow-eligibility purposes only once every four years. …

Back to the Past: Traditionalists will love the return of Missouri to the final weekend of the 2004 season (Nov. 20). For decades, the Jayhawks and Tigers collided on the last Saturday of the season, but the practice ended in 1996 when the Big 12 Conference was formed. Now the KU-MU finale is back.

Whither Homecoming: University officials prefer to hold homecoming in October, but KU has only one home game during that month. It’s Oct. 9 against Kansas State, but that’s also the weekend of the NASCAR races in Kansas City, meaning hotel and motel space probably will be scarce. KU has an open date Oct. 16, but doesn’t want to fill it because fall break falls on that weekend. On paper, the best options for homecoming are Sept. 25 against Texas Tech and Nov. 6 against Colorado.

Return of the Tougher Trio: From a competitive standpoint, the Jayhawks will face a more rugged conference slate in ’04 because Kansas will regain the Texas-Oklahoma-Texas Tech cycle of Big 12 South teams while losing Baylor, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State.

Show Them the Money: Bonuses are customary for coaching staffs in the wake of bowl bids, and it’s likely Mark Mangino and his cadre will be rewarded once a bid is confirmed. However, no determinations have been made yet, according to Marchiony.

Northwestern in Limbo: Way back on Aug. 30 when Kansas and Northwestern tangled in a steady rain at Memorial Stadium, nobody expected either team would finish with a 6-6 record and become bowl eligible. Yet while Kansas is virtually certain of receiving an invitation — the Tangerine Bowl probably — Northwestern has to keep its fingers crossed. The Wildcats will need the Big Ten to send two teams to the BCS to open up a spot in a Big Ten-affiliated bowl, most likely the Dec. 26 Motor City Bowl in Detroit.

Jax State Jubilant: Jacksonville State finished with an 8-3 record and will meet Western Kentucky in the I-AA playoffs Saturday. It’s the Alabama school’s first postseason appearance since climbing to I-AA status in 1995. Jax State also won its first Ohio Valley Conference championship.

Whittemore Back in Stats, Too: Bill Whittemore not only returned to the field Saturday, the KU quarterback returned to NCAA statistics because he was able to play in three-fourths of KU’s games. Whittemore trails only Texas Tech’s B.J. Symons in total offense with an average of 288.0 yards per game — a number that would have been higher if Whittemore hadn’t been hurt in the first quarter of the K-State game. Whittemore had just 45 yards against the K-State. Whittemore’s biggest game was the 50-47 overtime loss to Colorado when he amassed 483 yards.

Crowd Count: KU’s announced average home football attendance was 37,750. Last year’s average crowd was listed at 36,083, but the official accounting conducted months after the season showed the paid crowds were actually about 10,000 fewer than that.

Al Bohl Update: The man who hired Mangino now lives in St. Augustine, Fla., where his wife, Sherry, is an elementary school teacher. Bohl, who was fired in April after just 20 months as KU athletic director, has completed about 100 pages of a novel about college athletics, according to his son Brett. Bohl has plenty of time to write because he doesn’t have to work. KU is obligated to pay his $255,000 annual salary through June 30 of next year.

No Grid Joy for Roy: Is Roy Williams a jinx? Kansas was 2-10 in Williams’ last season as KU men’s basketball coach and darned if this fall North Carolina didn’t finish 2-10, including a season-ending loss to perennial dungeon-dweller Duke.

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