Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Football Falls Short to Texas Tech: RECAP

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Recapping the Kansas Jayhawks football loss, 43-28, in Lubbock to Texas Tech. What went wrong for KU in this Big 12 Showdown and what's the overall outlook for Lance Leipold's team? GOATs of the week, featuring Devin Neal, Lonnie Phelps, Cobee Bryant and more. And a quick preview of the Texas Longhorns ahead of KU's next opponent.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!LinkedInLinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at Linkedin.com/lockedoncollege Terms and conditions apply.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!Underdog FantasySign up on underdogfantasy.com with the promo code LOCKED ON and get your first deposit doubled up to $100!SimpliSafeWith Fast Protect™️ Technology, exclusively from SimpliSafe, 24/7 monitoring agents capture evidence to accurately verify a threat for faster police response. There’s No Safe Like SimpliSafe. Visit SimpliSafe.com/LockedOnCollege to learn more.UpsideDownload the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/locked to get $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more.NugenixText now and get a complimentary bottle of Nugenix Thermo, their most powerful fat incinerator ever, with key ingredients to help you get back into shape fast. Text COLLEGE to 231-231 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we go over the Kansas loss to Texas Tech on Saturday night. We'll take a quick look ahead to the Texas game, but mostly KU football on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well on Rock Chalk Sports Talk, Monday through Friday, 3 to 6, right on KLWN in Lawrence. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day.

We're free and available wherever you get your podcasts. And on today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we go over Kansas' 43-28 loss to Texas Tech on Saturday as Kansas drops to 6-4 on the season. At the very end, we'll do a quick look ahead to the Texas game. Don't worry for KU basketball stuff with the Champions Classic coming up on Tuesday. We're going to have a, I guess, a Champions Classic preview KU basketball talk for tomorrow's show when we're joined by Nick Schwert. This episode of Locked on Jayhawks, though, is brought to you by Sling TV.

Don't miss this week's matchup between Kansas and Texas. It's happening on FS1 and you can catch it with Sling. You can watch that game on Sling, the TV you love for a price you'll love to try today with Sling TV. KU falls to Texas Tech 43 to 28. It was Texas Tech early. They go up big at the 24 to 7, I believe. Kansas fights back. They have it looking like they might even get the lead or tie it up before the break. They get it to 24-21, and then they have the end-of-half kind of snafu that leads the Tech being up six,

but they still start with the ball in the second half, but they could never really regenerate kind of that momentum that when they had it 24-21 with the ball, never really got that back. They had an opportunity late, down 36-28, to maybe go down, get a touchdown, go for two about a year after what happened last year with winning in Austin

against Texas on the Jared Casey 2, and you might have needed a two-point conversion once again, and then Texas Tech was able to go away with it. Biggest difference in that game, just too many mistakes for Kansas. You look at whether it was turnovers for Kansas, the end-of-half too many mistakes for Kansas. You look at whether it was turnovers for Kansas, the end-of-half interception from Jason Bean.

You look at missed field goals, opportunities there, way too many penalties. That's been kind of a weird theme that's happened in some games this year that a Kansas team that wasn't very penalized a season ago, and that's certainly a calling card of Lance Leipold teams in that when you do have a well-coached team as this team is typically those teams don't have a lot of penalties. So kind of odd that that's been the case for this year's team,

but that has been kind of an attribute of this year's team for better or for worse. And it hurt them in the Texas tech game. That's for sure. So just too many mistakes overall for Kansas in that game to come away with a road win against, you know, and this is really the case for Kansas in that game to come away with a road win against, and this is really the case for every Big 12 game. If you're playing someone in the conference in general, if you make too many mistakes, everybody is good enough that they can beat you, let alone if you're playing them on the road in a night crowd type of environment.

Defense obviously struggled for Kansas, especially early. They had a nice little stretch, I guess, toward the end of the first half and at the start of the third quarter that they did get some stops and give the offense some opportunities but they were unable to take advantage of it but overall you give up over 40 points and you weren't able to come up with maybe that big back-breaking interception to the Texas Tech offense that was a Texas Tech offense that had thrown 16 interceptions as a unit this season second in the Big 12 coming into the day had 10 so like they had by far 16 interceptions as a unit this season second in the big 12 coming into the day had 10 it's like they had by far more interceptions than any team in the conference KU was unable to capitalize on that in addition to just struggling overall on the defensive side

of the ball you certainly had points in the game where areas you notice the difference of Jalen Daniels to Jason Bean and I mean the way, certainly very interesting quarterback storylines throughout the day. Jason Bean overall puts up a good stat line, played pretty well. He again had the end of first half interception, which probably should have been overturned. But even then, like, I'm not sure why he threw that ball. It was into like triple coverage and the guy was undercutting on the route. And that was kind of a i don't know

that's kind of a uh thing that leads to the difference between jaylen daniels and jason bean when you look at jason bean sometimes he locks in on one receiver he doesn't go through the progressions as well or as much as a guy like jaylen daniels it's just the the word that i've used before processing is a little bit better for jalen than it is for Jason Means. Overall, Jason Mean had a pretty good performance, helped you put up numbers and hit some big throws that first fourth down that you get down to tie the game seven to seven and made some good plays. The one to Quentin Skinner where he's kind of bobbing through the pocket to kind of keep you alive. Those were some really good plays. Overall, good game.

And again, when you view it from the standpoint of, Hey, he's our backup quarterback and look at all these other backup quarterbacks in the big 12, although that didn't really come to be the case for Texas tech because Tyler Shug was, was really good in that game for the red Raiders. But you know, if you look at it from that lens, it was still a good game from Jason being, but still plenty of times and moments that you did notice, man, that'd be better with J Jalen Daniels. And maybe you win

that game with Jalen Daniels. We also saw Ethan Vasco at the end, Jason Bean took a hard hit. That's what Lance Lightbulb said. The reason for putting him in was the beauty of, um, I guess. So, so last week when, when Kansas got up 37, 16, I had somebody ask me, because KU had the ball with, I don't know, whatever it was, three, four minutes left in the game, and Jason Bean went back out there. And somebody asked, well, why aren't they putting the backup in? And I was like, well, you probably don't want to put Jalen in if he's hurt, and then you're not going to put Ethan Vasco in,

because if Kansas is going to be playing in a bowl, which at that point it felt like, okay, it's going to happen, because they're up 21 with three, four minutes left. Then you have three regular season games after the Oklahoma state game and then the bowl game. And hypothetically, if you play him in the Oklahoma state game, that means that he wouldn't be available for one of the final three games or one of the final four games, um, with the bowl game included in case you needed him in case somebody else got hurt or whatnot, if you wanted to preserve the red shirt.

So now that you were able to not bring him in to any of those first nine games, even if he plays in the Tech game, the next two games, and the bowl game, he can preserve his red shirt. So it was cool to see him in action because we've heard a lot of good things about him in practice, and I thought he looked really good in that drive.

He did show, I think, a couple of freshman mistakes, like ran into a sack and kind of ran into near some other pressure. But you saw the mobility. You saw some of the arm talent from him. I was impressed what you saw in a tough situation for him to come in. I think the future is bright, certainly in this QB room. And if you look to next year, you know, Jalen Daniels still has two years after this that he can play.

Jason Bean still has, I believe, a year after this that he can play. You would certainly think that one of those two guys probably transfers in the offseason because, you know, one of them is not going to be the starter. I think you feel good that Ethan Vasco would move into that backup role for next year. But overall, I walked away from that game thinking that Kansas was still the better team than Texas Tech. I think Kansas is a better football team than Texas Tech. I think if you play 10 times on a neutral field or that game's in Lawrence or whatnot, I think Kansas might win six of them, right? I don't think it's like dominantly better, but, you know, it's just they made too many

mistakes and Texas Tech was the mistake free team. And for most of this season, Texas Tech has been the team that has made mistakes and Kansas has been a team that has made mistakes and kansas has been a team that has avoided mistakes you kind of got a weird game in that lens of looking at it and so on one hand like that's nice to say that oh hey kansas is actually a better team than one of the teams they lost to because that shows that there is a lot of talent on this team but on the other hand that's very frustrating because there's there's really no reason you should have lost that game when you look at how well the offense played and you know just outside of some of the mistakes you made so big picture still overall good Kansas still sitting at six and four

they're still bowl eligible you still once again we're competitive you still have been in every single team that you played this year that you also played last year has been a better game for you this year again the one exception the TCU game but TCU is way better this year than they were last year just if you go by how many did Kansas lose by last year how many did they win by and they've won by more or lost by less this season that continues to trend up they got blown out by Texas Tech at home last season this time it was a game that you were kind of in until the the final i don't know handful of minutes or final few minutes of that game when texas tech uh made the stop and and you know went from being up 36 28 and got the uh

whatever strip sack and then eventually the the touchdown to kind of put it away um but you've won six games you obviously can't make the big 12 title now like that is what went out the window with you losing that was kind of a fun hypothetical anyway that yeah if they beat texas tech then maybe we would have talked about it more because baylor had a loss on saturday and it made it more plausible but realistically that was kind of a step ahead and you look at all the talent k you could bring back next year maybe that's a conversation we have next year but it did feel like we were jumping the gun a little bit. But it was fun to talk about.

And the fact that Kansas was still technically alive to even make the Big 12 title with three games to go is pretty remarkable. But if you win one more game at this point, that's still in front of you, you secure a winning season, right? Even if you lose in the bowl game, if you win one more game,

or if you do win in the bowl game, that secures you having a winning season. If you win this one against Texas, it secures having a bunch of more funny memes and that you own Texas and all these things. You win against Kansas State in the final, okay, great. You win a rivalry that you haven't won in quite some time. There's still plenty to play for in these final two games,

even if it doesn't necessarily change, oh, would Kansas go to the Big 12 title or not, and all these things. It's been a remarkable season so far. It was a disappointing result for Kansas, especially because it did feel like they were the better team. But overall, these last three games, after you beat Oklahoma State to get win number six, they're the cherry on top games. And you just didn't really get the cherry on top in that last game. Okay, in just a second, we're going to get on to our goats of the week, both the good and the bad. But first this episode is brought to you by upside. Inflation has us all

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or more that's five dollars or more cash back on your first purchase of ten dollars or more using promo code locked with the upside boats week let's start with the good for this week. Offense in general was really good for Kansas. You run for 242 yards. They averaged 7.6 yards per carry and didn't end up with a win, which is wild. They had 283 passing yards, so super balanced in the game. 8.6 yards per attempt. Overall, Kansas had 525 yards, averaging over 8 yards per play.

I don't think I've seen a Kansas offense average over 8 yards per play in a lot. This almost feels like the, I think it was 2018 or 2019. Kansas lost at home to West Virginia, I think 2019, in a game that they almost got like a Puka Williams touchdown as time expired on like a hook and ladder play, but he ran out at like the 4 or 5 yard line, and they lost by less than a score. And they averaged two more yards per play than West Virginia, but had a couple more turnovers, made too many mistakes, lost the game.

This is kind of similar to that, honestly, in that, again, I feel like Kansas was the better team. They averaged 8.1 yards per play. As explosive as the Tech offense was, and Kansas couldn't stop them, Tech averaged 6.2 yards per play. So, again, kind of backing up that stuff. Offense overall was just great for KU. Offensive line was opening up huge holes for the running game.

If we're going into specifics of who to pick, Andy Kotelnicki, first of all, I mean, the chutzpah, I guess, if you're looking for that, that's kind of a Yiddish word for you can look it up if you don't know what it is. On that fourth down play, and he had like three verts going downfield, and they went to Jared Casey for the deep ball, who, by the way, Jared Casey deserves mention here because, again, like so great.

It's not just like the big catches and the long touchdown, but like, you know, he continues to key big blocks for you. But Kodanicki, great game once again, calling the plays. Devin Neal gets a good goat of the week. Back-to-back fantasies from Devin Neal. I mean, you're talking about a guy who seems to be hitting his stride from a player who was already really good. 190 rushing yards on 24 carries. He's got 56 carries the last two weeks combined, and he's got over 400 rushing yards in those last two weeks he has been phenomenal for this team and i

kind of expect that to continue these next two weeks his previous career high for rushing yards before the week game last week against oklahoma state was the texas game last year so we'll see what he can do against the longhorns in this matchup but i mean his vision and his cutting ability is so so good uh lawrence arnold gets a good goat of the week for a specific one. He had four catches, 110 yards at the long of 60. 46 of those yards came after the catch. He was a big time receiver for you on the outside, going back to his home state of Texas, playing against his former coach with Emmett Jones,

one of their assistants, the guy who recruited him to Kansas. He had a really good game for you on the outside and was kind of the leading target among receivers Mason Fairchild good as well he had a team high five catches 49 yards and then Earl Bostic I thought the whole offensive line did a very solid job for you Jason Bean was sacked twice Ethan Vasco was sacked once I mentioned earlier I feel like Vasco might have kind of ran into his one sack obviously you don't want to get sacked at all and and the KU offensive line has done pretty good at that this year, but they did give up the two there.

Overall, though, I thought a good game, but Earl Bostic was the best. And you look at pro football focus, he was excellent. He graded out at about a 90 as a pass blocker, first on the team. 73 as a run blocker, first on the team. But I also, and I've mentioned this before, I like looking at the pro football focus stuff. It can help you give context clues for stuff like this. Also, though, the fact that Earl Bostic was KU's highest graded run blocker

at just a 73 and KU ran for that many yards on that many yards per attempt, something seems a little funny there. Nonetheless, other good goats. We actually do have a couple from defense, despite it being a struggle. Lonnie Phelps, he had four pressures. He had two hits, two hurries. He had the big fourth fourth down stop he continued to be a menace on the outside you probably put Malcolm Lee here he had that big sack for you Kobe Bryant I mean as much as Texas Tech was able to move the ball on you and throw it all over you Tyler Shug goes 20 of 33 for 246 and a

touchdown with no interceptions Kobe Bryant was excellent in coverage. He had that near interception on the screen pass. Kobe Bryant was targeted seven times. He gave up one reception. Let me say that again. Kobe Bryant was targeted seven times. He gave up one reception for 16 yards. So they targeted him seven times.

It averaged out to about two yards per play for him. So not so good for them. We do have to get to the bad, though. Defense, just in general, for general for ku bad in that game it wasn't one of those games where like even in the oklahoma game where it was a struggle and and you had troubles all over you did at least create some turnovers and give your offense a few opportunities that wasn't as much the case in this one um you give up 279 on the ground you You have 246 in the air. You couldn't bring down Tyler Shuck, the quarterback. You just struggled tackling, and that was a theme all day long.

Kansas missed 21 tackles in the game. That was a season high for them, about five more than the previous season high, and if we're going specifically the linebackers were a big problem for Kansas in that game. I don't like singling guys out like this, but these are just the stats. Rich Miller missed four tackles. Tywon Berryhill missed two. Lorenzo McCaskill missed two. That's eight missed tackles from basically three of your main linebackers, and McCaskill only graded out of 26 in run defense.

I thought McCaskill had kind of a breakout game against Oklahoma State. I really like Rich Miller, Tywon Berryhill, and Lorenzo McCaskill, but it was a bad game for him in that one specific outing. And a lot of those missed tackles were trying to bring down Tyler Shuck. Also outside of Kobe Bryant, if we're looking for bad goats, the coverage outside of one Kobe Bryant, because if you take it out again, Kobe Bryant was targeted seven times, gave up one catch for 16 yards outside of Kobe Bryant. So every other pass intended for other people, KU defenders were targeted 23 times per pro football focus. And I don't believe they count screen passes as targeted on defenders. So they were targeted 23 times. 19 of those 23 were completions.

That's an 83% completion rate. And for 230 yards, which is 10 yards per attempt, that is very, very bad. Kansas already came into the game with a league-worst 66% completion percentage allowed by the defense last in the Big 12. Everyone outside of Kobe Bryant gave up 83 percent on passes targeted to them so not great there uh also bad goats jacob borchilla continues to struggle he's under 60 percent for his career i continue to mention it's wild that ku grades out in certain regards pretty well on special teams despite the fact that they weren't able to overhaul their kicker or punter

i'm honestly surprised the way that the ku hit the the transfer portal last year that they didn't go for a kicker i don't know how many kickers are in the portal or whatnot, but that was a problem last year. Like there was a big drop off between KU's field goal percentage and everyone else in the Big 12. And that continues to be the case in this one. But I guess you could look at it and say, well, we got lucky with the Iowa State game. So maybe that was kind of the reverse luck of it in that one. And then the end of the first half happenings deserves to be a bad goat, whether it was not or not the review, not going, I should, because it probably should have.

In fact, it should. Or if it was Jason being just making that pass, like let's begin there. He should have never thrown that pass to begin with. It was in triple codes undercutting the route. You had an opportunity to, to you know at least be down three maybe even tie it or take the lead toward the end of that half it was also kind of weird time management you had the devin neal like did he go out of bounds did he not and then you i don't know you kind of got confused there and then you give up the long ball like why were you playing

man-to-man defense to allow a long ball that happened against you at the end of that half and then they kicked the the long field goal after you called the timeout to ice them. And they missed the first one, which I don't really blame you for that because that happens all the time. But, you know, why were you playing the man to man? Why did you allow them to get into field goal range to begin with? And, you know, that's at least three point swing, probably a six point swing. I guess with the way that Borchella was kicking field goals, maybe KU doesn't score on that last drive, but they maybe even get a touchdown on the last drive.

So it could even be a 10-point swing that you allowed at the end of first-half happenings. And I know you lose by more than that at 15, but it's a different game at the end if that was the case. So those are the bad goats of the week, but still good things to take away. Once again, these are the cherry-on-top games for Kansas. All right, we're going to take an early look and a quick one at Texas in just a moment here. But first, this week's thrilling moment in college football is brought to you by Nissan.

The thrilling designs behind the new lineup from Nissan are intended to empower drivers and vehicles as capable as the driver themselves. When I think of the unbelievable abilities on the field for this week's thrilling moment, has to be that jason being touched down past to quentin skinner ku's down 33 to 21 and they're they're sitting in a tough situation where it's like hey this is gonna have to be four down territory if we don't get this here uh near the end line and bean has to maneuver around the pocket step up roll out to his right throws a dart downfield splits a couple. Skinner in the back corner of the end zone, makes the grab, kind of Santonio Holmes of whatever that was, 2007 Super Bowl, 2008 Super Bowl, with the Steelers against the Cardinals in the corner, toe taps down.

I think it was good in the NFL. I think he got both feet down. Unbelievable catch and throw by Bean to fit that in there and Skinner with the play. It ended up falling a bit short, but it gave you some hope at the end of the game and made you think, hey, we still have a chance here. And you actually did because the defense held them to three points

and gave the offense one more shot at it. This segment has been inspired by the thrilling new designs featured across Nissan's new lineup of vehicles. Pursue what thrills you in the all-new Frontier, Armada, or Pathfinder today. Available now at NissanUSA.com. Okay, finishing things up here on Locked on Jayhawks. Let's take an early look at Texas.

Longhorns come in at 6-4 on the season. They've lost a lot of close games. So if you can make this a close game, you feel like, hey, maybe they just, I don't know, don't have things going their way. Maybe they're one of those teams. That's been a theme for Texas these past few years, but the one-point loss to Alabama, the the seven point loss last week to TCU, they lost

in overtime by three at Texas Tech. So don't think that, hey, man, I can't believe we lost to Tech. Like so did Texas earlier this season too. That's just been, they all had the seven point loss that they were up big on Oklahoma State and couldn't hold on. They just lose close games. And you'd like to think that Kansas can be a good team in close games. There you go. Bijan Robinson, stud. They've got a good running game. Quinn Ewers, very talented at quarterback. They've got talented weapons on the outside. Quinn Ewers will put up some dangerous passes, take advantage of those, and come up with interceptions. The defense for Texas has been hit or miss. Clearly have a lot of talent there. They were good last week, held TCU to 17 points, held Alabama to 20 points. They've also had some games where like Oklahoma state has put up 41. So it's very hit or miss. The big question

is what's the mentality, the mindset of Texas is going to be. Are they going to be mad because they just lost TCU? Are they going to be mad because they lost to Kansas last year and they had to hear about it for a long period of time or because they lost the TCU and now they're sitting with four losses are they going to be sitting there going man our season's over best case scenario we're eight and four we don't control our destiny to even make the big 12 now we're coming into Lawrence it's going to be I don't know I'd assume probably like 30 degrees or something like that we don't really want to be here and then you get smacked in the mouth by a physical Kansas football team. I don't know if that'll be the case or if they've been tired of hearing all the Kansas jokes.

I'm not sure on that one, but that'll certainly be a factor as well in trying to determine where things are at for this game. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. Coming up on tomorrow's show, we will talk plenty KU basketball ahead of the Duke game for the Champions Classic with Nick Schwert. If you have anything that you'd like for the show to talk about, you can follow along on Twitter at D Johnson radio or comment on our YouTube channel.

Don't forget to subscribe to the show. So you're getting all the latest with locked on Jayhawks, whether it is anywhere you hear podcasts or with YouTube, that'll do it for today's episode. Have a good rest of your day. I'll see you on Rock Chalk Sports Talk later today.