The Kansas defense was plagued by misalignments and missed assignments, as head coach Lance Leipold put it, from the beginning of the Jayhawks’ game against Cincinnati.
The results were not pretty. KU conceded 603 total yards, including 388 through the air and a pair of touchdowns to the Bearcats’ quarterback Brendan Sorsby, in a 37-34 home loss that dealt the Jayhawks a significant setback early in their Big 12 Conference slate.
It was the most vulnerable KU’s young secondary, a mixture of first-time starters and transfers at cornerback and safety, had looked all season after a promisingly inconspicuous start to the year. Leipold said the Jayhawks lacked confidence in coverage and “got tentative and played soft in some areas.” Defensive coordinator D.K. McDonald said issues arose that he hadn’t seen in KU’s previous four games.
“I thought we had done a good job covering up until last game,” he added. “Once again, we got to do a lot better job as coaches, I got to do a better job as a coordinator helping those guys out and naturally, they got to get out and execute what they’re trying to do.”
KU has a golden chance to prove its defensive struggles against Cincinnati were an aberration when it travels to Orlando, Florida, to face UCF on Saturday night at 6:30 p.m. Central time.
The Knights’ intricate, injury-laden quarterback situation started to develop a bit of clarity on Wednesday night when Jacurri Brown showed up on the initial availability report with a “questionable” designation and Cam Fancher and Tayven Jackson were not listed. The likely choice now for head coach Scott Frost is between Fancher, the opening-day starter in UCF’s ugly 17-10 win over Jacksonville State on Aug. 28, and Jackson, who replaced Fancher when he got hurt and has gone 66-for-101 for 809 yards with three touchdowns and one interception.
Jackson suffered an AC joint sprain midway through the Knights’ last game, a 34-20 loss to Kansas State in which UCF hung around but couldn’t make enough of a push in the fourth quarter to challenge the Wildcats, even after Jackson returned to the game and played through the pain.
Running back Myles Montgomery tallied a career-high 119 rushing yards and Jaden Nixon added 66 more in the loss.
“Those running backs are special,” McDonald said. “They’ve both got great speed, they were running away from the defense, they do that a lot on film.”
The KU secondary will be tested again, even without a quarterback as good as Sorsby on the opposite side of the field, because of the size that UCF has at wide receiver with players like the 6-foot-3 Marcus Burke and DJ Black, who caught an 82-yard touchdown from Brown against Kansas State. Duane Thomas Jr., a Charlotte transfer whom McDonald called a “jitterbug,” is actually the Knights’ leading receiver with 16 catches for 203 yards, though he does not have a touchdown on the year.
Defensively, UCF is getting strong performances upfront from the likes of defensive ends Nyjalik Kelly and Malachi Lawrence and tackles Rodney Lora and John Walker, although Horace Lockett will not play on Saturday. Linebacker Lewis Carter leads the team with 25 tackles in just three games, and starting cornerbacks Jayden Bellamy and Antione Jackson have graded out well for the Big 12’s top pass defense.
“I’m sure they’re going to want to put pressure on us from their front,” KU offensive coordinator Jim Zebrowski said. “They can. They play a lot of man coverage, they run really well. So I think they’re going to probably try … to get pressure with their front four if they can, and try and play coverage in the back end.”
It’ll be important for a KU offense that has been potent (450.6 yards of total offense per game) to stay on the field (the Jayhawks are converting just 31.5% of third downs) for extended stretches and wear the Knights down.
UCF Knights (3-1, 0-1 Big 12) vs. Kansas Jayhawks (3-2, 1-1 Big 12)
• Acrisure Bounce House, Orlando, Florida, 6:30 p.m. Central time
• Broadcast: ESPN2
• Radio: Jayhawk Radio Network (in Lawrence, KLWN AM 1320 / K269GB FM 101.7 / KKSW FM 105.9)
• Betting line: KU -4.5; over/under 54.5
• Series history: KU leads 1-0
Keep an eye out
1. Settling: As unreasonable as it may seem to critique an offense that put up nearly 600 yards against Cincinnati, a lot of those yards went to waste as KU settled for chip-shot field goals on two possessions and Jalon Daniels fumbled on another. At times, the Jayhawks’ offense got quite ugly when it got close to the goal line; right before Daniels’ fumble, KU nearly turned it over when a botched snap hit a tight end who was going in motion as part of an unusual wildcat-formation look, but the play was blown dead due to a false start. Ultimately, as head coach Lance Leipold put it postgame, “If we score touchdowns and not kick field goals, then maybe we’re in a better mood in here today.” The Jayhawks’ offensive approach inside the 20-yard line will be particularly interesting to watch after kicker Laith Marjan showed up on the injury report this week. His backup is freshman walk-on Dane Efird.
2. Kamara shuffle: It’s been an interesting start to the season for Jon Jon Kamara, a redshirt freshman linebacker with sky-high potential who has been repeatedly thrust into a starting role, only to experience his most extensive playing time when he serves as a backup. Kamara started a pair of games in place of an injured Bangally Kamara earlier in the season, but left one in the first quarter due to a targeting ejection and played rotational snaps in the other when the elder Kamara turned out to be healthy enough to make a big impact. Jon Jon Kamara ended up seeing the most extensive playing time of his career against Cincinnati when Bangally Kamara suffered his own second-half targeting disqualification; now the younger Kamara will start for a third time against UCF and presumably get most of the first half to himself.
3. Mixing and matching: KU’s fifth defensive back spot, a somewhat new addition to the Jayhawks’ defensive scheme this year under D.K. McDonald, looked at the start of the season like an excellent way for them to deploy the talents and skill set of safety Mason Ellis. But Ellis suffered an injury against West Virginia, as did reserve safety Laquan Robinson against Cincinnati, leaving cornerback Syeed Gibbs as one of KU’s only viable options for the position. When Gibbs himself briefly had to exit against the Bearcats, too, starting corner Jalen Todd showed some versatility by moving inside to nickel. Gibbs is expected to play against UCF, but if KU liked what it saw with Todd on the interior and Austin Alexander and D.J. Graham II at outside corner, it could potentially return to that three-corner look, this time voluntarily.
Spotlight on…
Blake Herold: For a player who isn’t technically a starter, the redshirt sophomore defensive tackle is making as big an impact on his side of the ball as anyone. Against Cincinnati, Herold recorded seven pressures, the highest single-game total of any Jayhawk this season, as well as the only sack the Bearcats’ offensive line has allowed this year. He played the highest quantity of snaps of any defensive lineman, a particularly impressive feat, according to his coaches, given how much of a toll every week of practice takes on him: “It’s amazing what he fights through to get to the game every Saturday, and then when he goes out there, he makes play after play, and he plays fast, and you would never know the struggles that he goes through,” McDonald said.
Inside the numbers
595: KU has already allowed at least this many total yards twice this season, compared to twice total in the previous two years under Leipold.
60.1: The Jayhawks’ tackling grade on Pro Football Focus, which is 109th of 136 FBS teams; they missed 13 tackles against Cincinnati.
3: Number of UCF players with 100-yard rushing performances this season (Brown, Montgomery and Nixon); no other Big 12 school has that many.
Prediction
KU wins 34-27. The Jayhawks’ defense doesn’t need to play as well as it did against West Virginia for KU to be viable in its upcoming Big 12 games, it just needs to put up a minimum level of resistance that decidedly exceeds what it did against Cincinnati. UCF’s banged-up quarterbacks should have less success moving the ball than Sorsby did.
Meanwhile, KU’s offense should remain its usual relatively consistent self, and will likely perform better than it has of late in red-zone situations after additional time spent emphasizing those opportunities. The Bounce House at night will do plenty to energize the Knights, but KU will find a way to get back on track.
