Attempts at Perspective
My first look at the 2006 Kansas football team was a frustrating one, both in terms of quality of play and length of game, the latter foiling my best efforts to remain sober for the duration of the game.
There are positives to take away from last night’s game. Kansas gained 391 yards. That’s only three fewer yards than Iowa State gained against Toledo in their triple-overtime game at Ames. Kansas outgained Toledo by 154 yards and gained nine more first downs. It took five turnovers by Kerry Meier to lose this game. That’s (fingers-crossed) not likely to happen again.
Between their final play of the first half and the final play of the game, the Kansas defense thoroughly shut down Toledo’s offense. The 2006 edition of the Kansas D isn’t going to be as good as the 2005 edition, but they figure to be decent and played well enough for the team to win had the offense held onto the ball.
All is not lost.
Before the season started, I figured the Jayhawks would likely lose either @Toledo or to South Florida. A 3-1 non-conference record will not strike a death blow to Kansas’s pursuit of bowl eligibility. A 2-2 non-conference record probably would. Thus, seven days from today, Kansas plays a must-win game.
Can we expect them to win?
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4 Responses to “Attempts at Perspective”
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September 18th, 2006 at 10:44 am
I think we can expect them to win. If Kerry Meier is a sophomore, we don’t lose that game.
That being said, I’m a disappointed with some of the play calling choices, particularly the last two plays.
The fumble in the OT period was because we called a “read option” and because Meier ultimately either couldn’t decide what to do or fumbled. Why call an option at all there?
The fade route was definitely too complicated as well. We’ll learn from that as well. Hopefully the playcallers will take a few minutes of quiet reflection to see if they should have been better stewards with their freshman qb.
I’m not worried about Meier though - he just doesn’t seem to get phased.
We’ll win, we’ll be 3-1, and we should definitely get wins against KSU and CU to get to 5 wins. The AM, Baylor and OSU games are all winnable, and I’m guessing we pick up at least one more of those.
I think we’ll be bowl eligible.
September 18th, 2006 at 11:06 am
The attempted fade route was an unmitigated disaster of both design and execution.
On the other hand, I think the fumbled handoff on the “read option” came out of a rather safe and sensible play call. It would have been simpler to hand the ball to Cornish on an option-less draw play, but I can’t fault Quartaro for calling that particular play. Toledo had struggled to defend that play throughout the game and the Kansas offensive line hadn’t been consistently knocking the Toledo defensive line backwards on straight ahead running plays.
September 18th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
In that case, a fake would have worked just fine. I have no issue with a fake, but an option seems overly complicated given the circumstances.
Perhaps Occam’s razor has a place in the playbook eh?
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:12 am
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