TCU invades Memorial Stadium on Saturday as, at the moment at least, more than a four-touchdown favorite.
The biggest reason centers on the bigger, older, more experienced bodies that the Horned Frogs line up in front of their quarterback and running backs.
At offensive line, TCU starts five blockers who tip the scales at 300 pounds or higher. Kansas starts two whose weight starts with a 3.
The Horned Frogs average 318 pounds up front, the Jayhawks 291 pounds.
TCU starts one O-linemen with five years in the program, three with four, one with three.
Kansas starts one O-linemen with four years in the program (center Joe Gibson), one with three years (right guard Jacob Bragg), two with two (left tackle De’Andre Banks and left guard Mesa Ribordy), one with one (right tackle Hakeem Adeniji).
Banks, ideally suited to play guard, has been the team’s most valuable O-lineman and has moved to left tackle for lack of a better option.
Projected starting left tackle Jordan Shelley-Smith was forced into giving up the game because of concussions, a smart move on his part.
Searching for the right combinations, coupled with injuries, has made it difficult to develop chemistry, another issue stalling the line’s development.
Senior Ke’aun Kinner and freshman Khalil Herbert, a pair of talented running backs, have break-away speed, but haven’t been given the holes to use it.
Consequently, Kansas ranks 124th among 128 FBS schools with 91 rushing yards per game and 115th with 3.34 yards per carry.
Head coach David Beaty has entrusted offensive line coach Zach Yenser with evaluating the position and deciding which recruits to offer scholarships. Yenser passed on Lawrence High’s Trey Georgie, a freshman at Illinois State. It will be interesting to track his career to see whether FBS schools properly evaluated him in passing on him.
Before the current coaching staff arrived, Kansas had not done well in recent years recruiting local offensive linemen.
Nebraska’s 6-foot-5, 300-pound redshirt freshman Christian Gaylord of Baldwin High is listed second on the Cornhuskers’ depth chart at left tackle.
Scott Frantz, 6-5, 293, a redshirt freshman out of Free State High, opened the season as Kansas State’s starting left tackle.
J.R. Hensley, a 6-5, 310-pound red-shirt freshman at Hawaii, played his youth football in Lawrence before the family moved to Edmond, Okla. Brother of New York Yankees pitching prospect Ty Hensley, a 2012 first-round draft choice, the younger Hensley was disappointed Kansas did not offer him a scholarship and is looking forward to making his first college start Saturday for the Rainbows.
Beaty and Yenser hope that they have a starting tackle in waiting in redshirting Charles Baldwin, recruited out of junior college by powerhouse Alabama, participated in spring football but was dismissed from the team by coach Nick Saban last May for an undisclosed rules violation.
If Baldwin has matured since breaking ‘Bama’s rules, he could help, but the long-term solution lies in Kansas identifying the right high school players to recruit and landing its fair share.
As many problems as Kansas has had at the quarterback position in recent years, it ranks no higher than the second-biggest cause of the program’s prolonged slide.