It’s too early to have much of a feel for how good Kansas University’s football team will be this season because Northwestern State, Saturday night’s season-opening opponent, was so inferior.
It isn’t too early to feel confident about one thing: The Jayhawks won’t bore their growing audience with plow-horse types a step too slow to attract top-tier Big 12 teams. They’re beyond that.
They showed they have too much young speed, too many serious athletes, to lull us to sleep the way the offense did at times a year ago, particularly in the early portion of conference play.
Dull KU was not in blasting young, small Division I-AA foe Northwestern State, 49-18, to the delight of an announced crowd of 44,025 at Memorial Stadium.
Brian Murph, Marcus Herford, Kerry Meier, Jon Cornish and Jake Sharp all had opportunities to showcase their flashy speed.
Any conversation about the most entertaining player to watch on this team has to start with that quintet. When running with the football tucked safely away, each has the ability to run into what seems like a wall, then cut, or hesitate, or plow into the clear. Each seems to have the instinct to call upon the right move at the right instant.
Murph sprinted his way to a phenomenal statistical oddity. After running back a punt 70 yards for a touchdown, Murph’s career punt-return totals were two returns, two touchdowns. As was the case in the Fort Worth Bowl, Murph added a TD catch.
“We were talking about that on the sidelines,” Herford said.
Herford revealed he and Murph have a friendly competition, seeing who can have more touchdown returns this season, Murph on punts, Herford on kickoffs. Herford nearly had one, but was tripped up at the last instant and settled for an 88-yard return.
“I was mad at myself for that,” he said. The job suits Herford, a quarterback a year ago, a backup receiver now. He’s fast, strong and a little shifty when he needs to be.
“I love it,” he said of returning kicks, then went on to praise the job the blockers did all night.
Herford is improving as a receiver and has big-play potential there as well, though he only had one catch for 18 yards.
Cornish was plugging along in a way that it seemed just a matter of when he would break a big one. It came early in the third quarter, when he broke free and sprinted along the right sideline for a 69-yard touchdown on his way to a 13-carry, 140-yard night. Cornish won’t ever play that inferior a football team again in his life, so why not have a little fun at the Demons’ expense?
Sharp made a nice run along the left sideline for an 18-yard gain and averaged 6.5 yards on the first six carries of his college career. He uses his quickness to get yards up the middle, too.
The same can be said for Meier. He threw some good passes, especially on the run, and he threw some bad ones. He consistently was impressive running the football, blending speed, power and shiftiness.
A third-year sophomore, Herford said of the team speed during his stay at KU, “It’s gone way up. We’ve got a lot of speedsters. The program’s getting better, and a lot more speedsters are wanting to come here.”
Speed fills stadiums, and big crowds attract more fast recruits.
