Mike YoderIn less than two weeks, the Kansas football team will make it’s season debut.
So it’s just a matter of time before the coaches will announce the Jayhawks’ starting quarterback, one would assume.
Even so, a man who possesses a great deal of intel on the matter, offensive coordinator Doug Meacham, maintains the stance he and head coach David Beaty have taken on the matter for months — it’s possible KU might not name a winner of the competition until the Sept. 2 opener against Southeast Missouri State.
How close does Meacham think the staff is to tabbing either junior transfer Peyton Bender or redshirt sophomore Carter Stanley the No. 1 QB?
“Ummm,” Meacham pondered on Friday. “Not.”
Nick KrugThe coordinator in charge of the Jayhawks’ Air Raid reiterated it’s “possible” an announcement might not come until game day.
According Meacham, there’s more to the sit-tight approach than keeping KU’s FCS opponent, SEMO, guessing.
“We’re all kind of conspiracy theorists as coaches,” he admitted. “So you prefer to not let them dial up a game plan, because there’s film of Bender out there at Washington State and there’s film of the other one. So why give them a heads up on it? That may be a small piece of why, but really I just think we’re enjoying watching those guys battle.”
During the first three weeks of preseason practices, the Jayhawks spent approximately 80 percent of their sessions on the grass practice fields near Hoglund Ballpark, instead of the turf fields to the southeast of Memorial Stadium.
Beaty said his time as an assistant at Texas A & M opened his eyes to the benefit of maximizing camp practices on grass, because he thinks less wear and tear piles up on players when they’re running, cutting and (sometimes) hitting on natural surfaces.
Nick Krug“I believe that it’s two-for-one on that surface out there. That artificial surface, you’re putting possibly two practices worth of work on your body, as opposed to what it is when you go on the grass,” Beaty speculated. “I don’t have any science to back that up. I just watch and see how I feel after I’m standing on it out there for two hours. I know how my legs feel. I know how my back feels. I’m old, but at the same time I also played on it for a long time, so you know the difference. We as coaches, we work out on that stuff a lot. There’s a difference now; there’s a difference.”
The third-year head coach admitted players suffer injuries practicing on grass, too.
The Jayhawks are done using the grass fields, and will practice exclusively on turf this week and next, leading up to their season-opener.
Now more than three weeks into nothing but practices, Beaty knows his players, like most all over the nation, are at a point where they just need to play an actual game.
KU’s third-year head coach wished an exhibition of some sort were a possibility this time of year.
“I don’t know how you’d ever do it, but the high school model across the country is that you scrimmage before you play somebody. It’d be nice to be able to do that just so you could put it on the field against someone else before you go live in a game,” Beaty said. “But it’s not ever going to happen — I get the model that we’re in.”
Both the players and coaches at this juncture, he added, want to know where they’re at relative to opponents.
“And we’re starting to get into game prep now,” Beaty added, “which is good.”
Bleacher Report on Tuesday published a list of the top 100 college football players for the upcoming season and the Jayhawks weren’t overlooked.
Junior defensive end Dorance Armstrong Jr. came in at No. 64.
“No returning Big 12 player had more sacks than Dorance Armstrong Jr.,” David Kenyon wrote, referring to the D-lineman’s 10, as a sophomore. “He added 10 more tackles for loss, as well as three forced fumbles. Kansas won’t be a major factor in the Big 12, but Armstrong is a bona fide star.”
Six other conference players ranked ahead of Armstrong, the Big 12’s Preseason Defensive Player of the Year: No. 60, Oklahoma D-end Ogbonnia Okoronkwo; No. 44, Texas linebacker Malik Jefferson; No. 21, Oklahoma State receiver James Washington; No. 16, OSU quarterback Mason Rudolph; No. 8, Texas left tackle Connor Williams; No. 1, OU quarterback Baker Mayfield.
