Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Wins in Morgantown + Lance Leipold to Nebraska rumors

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

The Kansas Jayhawks' football team won in Morgantown against West Virginia in overtime. What led to the win, what it means, and GOATs of the week featuring Jalon Daniels, Devin Neal, Daniel Hishaw, Luke Grimm, Cobee Bryant and more. Plus, addressing the Lance Leipold-Nebraska stories with the Huskers' job now open.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!UpsideDownload the FREE Upside App and use promo code Locked to get $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more.Underdog FantasySign up on underdogfantasy.com with the promo code LOCKED ON and get your first deposit doubled up to $100! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

on today's locked on Jayhawks. What do you think we're going to talk about? I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well on rock truck sports talk Monday through Friday from three to six on KLWN and Lawrence. Thanks for making locked on Jayhawks. Your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcast on today's edition of

locked on Jayhawks. That's right. We're talking and available wherever you get your podcasts. On today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, that's right, we're talking KU West Virginia. The Jayhawks take down the Mountaineers. They have now won multiple games on the road in Big 12 play under Lance Leipold through just 14 games of his coaching career.

Meanwhile, you look back and it's like I saw somebody tweet out the stat with Clint Bowen or I don't know why I picked him because he was just an interim head coach or with Les Miles or with Charlie Weiss or any of the David Beatty, whatever, like didn't win a single Big 12 road game. And he's already done it twice now coming here pretty recently between two of them. Today's episode is brought to you by Underdog. Sign up on underdogfantasy.com with the promo code LOCKEDON and get your first deposit doubled up to $100. So KU takes down West Virginia in overtime 55-42.

Kobe Bryant with the big pick six to seal it. And it was a little bit similar to the Texas game in one regard. Now the Texas game, you got a big at halftime, you were dominant, and then you kind of let it slip into the fourth quarter, and then they scored first. You needed the touchdown. You needed the two-point conversion. It wasn't quite like that.

But in terms of just in the fourth quarter, KU holding a double-digit lead and letting it slip through their fingers and needing overtime to get the win, it was a little bit like Texas there. So that's not great that you needed even overtime to have it because you had that 11-point lead. You just had to essentially make one stop without giving up points or stop the two-point conversion or get like one extra first down offensively and you would have been able to seal the deal. And I'm sure that if you're nitpicking is the one thing if you're Kansas. But again, there were 13 half-point underdogs. Even going to overtime showed resilience and toughness

and a good sign of progress. But again, as Lance Leipold will say, we're not monitoring things as far as, you know, oh, it was a positive, this was a moral victory. There are no moral victories anymore, and that is what the staff has preached so much to the players. That's the type of stuff that happens, I think, when you preach that over and over again, that you're able to have that extra intensity toward the end of games.

Unbelievable performance by the KU offense, unbelievable performance from Jalen Daniels. The stats aren't gaudy. I mean, you're looking at a little over 200 yards passing the football, a little under eight yards per attempt, but every single big play KU needed, he came up huge. KU went 11 of 15 on third downs. They went one of one on fourth downs. A big reason why is Jalen Daniels, and it wasn't just with the passing. We saw him look great as a runner, and of the season, but you didn't know if that was just going to be, hey, this is a little wrinkle we're going to throw into the game a couple times. No, that was like a staple of what they did against West Virginia. Will it be a staple moving forward, or is now that so much on tape that KU is going to use that and counter off of it a little bit

and still use some of it, but maybe not as much? I don't know. That's the beauty of the multiple system that they're running, that one week they could run a little triple option. The next week, maybe it's a little less triple option. Maybe it's more of a spread look passing the football. Maybe the next week it's more of a power run or a wide zone scheme, right? They can kind of mix this stuff up and they have all sorts of different personnel to be able to do it. And having the tight ends and the amount of great running backs that they have really opens up the creativity of the different formations

and things you can do offensively. And when you combine that with the way Jalen Daniels is playing, he is third in the country right now, third in the entire country in total QBR on ESPN. You combine that with the running game KU has, you had ultimate balance, both offense or both rushing and passing end up over 200 yards in the game. You can't really complain about anything that the offense did in that game.

There are some questions about the defense, right? If we want to nitpick again, because you get a win, you're Kansas football, you're 2-0 for the first time in over a decade. You're currently in first place of the Big 12. Defense struggled. But I think there are some bright spots, even in the fact that you got torched a ton in that first half. Four drives for West Virginia, they get a touchdown on all four, and a couple of them were super easy with easy long scores. I think if you're looking at the bright spot of that, you just say that,

well, a couple of those early scores were just long plays where we messed up. Like somebody missed a tackle or a DB fell down and it led to a touchdown. That's not always going to happen. They did kind of dice you up in the air. That's a little bit worrisome for a young secondary, though you made some big plays when you needed to at the end. But how about this? It wasn't as easy as last year because of the fact that last year you were giving it up in the air and on the ground.

You held them to under four yards per carry. So you did make them more of a one-dimensional pass-first offense. And they just had a, like, I think JT Daniels is a solid, good quarterback. Bryce Ford Wheaton is probably one of the best receivers in the Big 12. Sam James is a really good No. 2 receiver. Like, they have, and a really good number two receiver. They have a really good offense coordinator, play caller in Graham Harrell. So they have reasons that make it tough to defend them as a passing team. So it's not as easy to just say, oh, well, you should have shut them

down. But the defense was a lot better in the second half and came through really big in the third quarter and obviously overtime there. So there are bright spots. It will be a little bit of a worry, but I still think they're better than they were last year. But this game was basically won because of that offense. That offense was elite in the game against West Virginia and through two games, you look at all the numbers, you know, points per game, yards per game. They're great there. They're, you know, top 50 in the country in passing yards per attempt. They're top 20 in the country in rushing yards per attempt. They're top 50 in the country in passing yards per attempt they're top 20 in the country in rushing yards per attempt they're top 25 in the country in total yards per play these

are all numbers that are great they're not really turning the ball over um offensively a ton right you have the Jalen Daniels interception in the opener obviously you had the other turnovers which were like a Savion Morrison fumble but that was when the game was decided with the backups you had the Luke Grimm fumble but but that was special teams, not offense. You didn't have the turnovers in this one. Now, there was the one close one with Daniel Hyshaw, which that could have really turned the game on its head there, but you found a way to get through it.

And the way that Jalen Daniels is playing, this is exactly what we were talking about in the preseason. If he ends up being a top-half quarterback in the Big 12, you're going to see wins develop from that. This is a perfect example why. Because so far through this season, through two games, he has looked like a top half quarterback in the Big 12. And you won that game in large part because of Jalen Daniels.

So really, all in all, just fantastic game plan and everything from Andy Kotelnicki and the offense. Jalen Daniels was great. The running game was great. Really, those two guys with Devin Neal and Daniel Hyshaw, Jalen Daniels coming in there running the football as well. The offensive line, I mean, you're talking about being able to, against a West Virginia unit that had a handful of sacks against Pittsburgh,

Jalen Daniels wasn't sacked once. Now, there were a few times, yes, he was under pressure. The one throw where he had the touchdown to Devin Neal was fantastic by Jalen Daniels. Kind of perfect sidestep. Lofts it up and over. That was really good work from Jalen Daniels. But the offensive line overall, West Virginia only had four tackles for loss. They had less tackles for loss against Kansas than they had sacks against Pittsburgh. So the offensive line did great. KU comes up with a win. 2-0 and now we can start talking about

what is the win outcome for this team. Could they really challenge for a bowl? I feel crazy saying it. You're only two games through the season, but we haven't been able to have this conversation much for your KU. I'm still not quite there, but it's a conversation now at least. Can they win four games? I had them at three before the season, but I's a conversation now at least. Can they win four games? You know, I had them at

three before the season, but I had them losing this game. That bumps them up to four for me. Now, if you beat Houston this week, I think at that point I would get fully on board that this could be a bowl team. And if you beat Houston and Duke the next two, is this team receiving votes? That would be wild to think about. And then you'd be heading into homecoming weekend against Iowa State. And boy, could the turnout for that be very, very fun. Iowa State looked pretty good, too. So that could be quite the matchup in your next Big 12 game.

But at the very least, even if KU loses to Houston and Duke the next two weeks, which Duke looked pretty good this past week as well, KU would still be in first in the Big 12 because they're 1-0. They can't lose a Big 12 game, so that's a positive there. All right, we're going to get to our GOATs of the week in just a moment here, the good and the bad. We're also going to get into some of the stuff about Lance Leipold's and the Nebraska job being opened up.

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Play Store. That's Underdog Fantasy, promo code LOCKEDON. Get in on the college football pick-em action today. We'll get into the Lance Leipold stuff in just a second here, but first we've got to do our goats of the week. So, reminder, you know, there's good goats, the greatest of all time. There's bad goats, which is kind of the old way of saying it before it became the greatest of all time. There's bad goats, which is kind of the old way of saying it before it became the greatest of all time. The idea that it was, you messed something up, you are now the goat in a bad way. Obviously not going to be a lot of bad goats in a game where you win, let alone in a game where you were the underdog, let alone in a game where it really was the kind of statement

win of the Lance Leipold era, right? Like the Texas win feels like it's what got things started. The West Virginia win here feels like it's making for something maybe special in year number two. Good goats. There's going to be a long list here. Jalen Daniels, 18 of 29, 219 yards, three tutties, no interceptions. But what he did with his legs, too. I mean, whether it was just maneuvering perfectly in the pocket, like I mentioned the one on the throw to Devin Neal, but just running downfield as well. 12 carries for 85 yards,

goes back into kind of the triple option thing that they were doing, the spread option that maybe you see a little bit from like Coastal Carolina. He was just elite in every single way and on pretty much every big play that you needed to have it. Like even the fourth down, early in the game that you converted to Jared Casey, Jalen Daniels fit a tight ball in there. And we'll get to Jared Casey in a moment here because that was a big-time catch by him as well. But Jalen was so calm under pressure.

He was money. He was nails. And KU doesn't win that game without him. Again, it just shows the value of having good quarterback play, and KU has just that. And we keep, like, I keep trying to center myself that, yeah, Jalen Daniels has been so good, whether it was at the end of last year, the beginning of this year, it's still such a small sample size, right?

It's still five started games, basically a sixth game if you count the K-State game in there. So it's like, okay, this is still such a small sample. But eventually when every single week it's like, nope, he was good again. No, he was good again. You have to start to be like, okay, maybe he's just really good. You know what I mean?

Like, you have the quarterback position open in the Big 12. Could he be a top three quarterback in the league? I don't know. But he's certainly playing like it early in this season. Devin Neal and Daniel Hyshaw, I think that's just a slashy for me. They definitely emerged as the top two backs. Now, whether that will be something that carries over week to week, whether that will be something that, you know, maybe another week,

if Savion Morrison or Kai Thomas takes their first carry for 12 yards, the coaching staff says, hey, we're going to go with the hot hand. We're going to keep feeding them. I don't know, but it certainly seems like they have carved out the biggest role at the running back position. Combined, they went for 21 touches, 20 carries, one reception, 122 yards from scrimmage, and they had five total touchdowns. They were workhorses for you. They were big time, and they helped you win that game. Luke Grimm had that big long

ball catch. I want to say it was on a third down. In total, six catches, 66 yards. He was the top target for KU in the game. And then how about Quentin Skinner? Three catches for 50 yards. He had the game-winning touchdown in there. Continues to impress for KU. He's had four catches and it seems like every single one of them has been really big on the season for Quentin Skinner. So those two guys, good goats for KU in the first week. Jacoby Bryant obviously has to be up in here. Had the pick six, the game winner there. Would highly recommend checking out the radio call.

It was really good stuff from Brian Haney, as always. Which, by the way, and I guess, I don't know, I'll save this for bad goats, but the ESPN Plus broadcast, like, come on, man. Rich Miller, game high 12 tackles from him. As I mentioned, KU didn't have a great game against West Virginia. They were a lot better in the second half, but they did actually do a good job stopping the run, which at the very least allows them not to just control the clock the entire time

and allows your offense to get the ball back, right? And for KU's offense to make noise against West Virginia. So certainly a positive there. Torrey Laughlin, I think, gets a throw in here. He was the guy who recovered the fumble on the muffed punt by West Virginia. And normally that would more so be about the West Virginia returner, I guess, being a bad goat. I'm only doing this for KU people, though. But that ball could have easily squirted out of bounds.

Or he could have just been touching the out-of-bounds line, and then it's West Virginia ball. So the ball skills and the concentration to be able to grab that from before it went out, that was big time from Torrey Laughlin. and that felt like maybe the biggest turning point of the game I would definitely say the Mason Fairchild Jared Casey combo deserves to be on the good goats Trevor Cardell has just kind of fallen off on on the playing time list so that's interesting but Fairchild and Casey have been awesome so far with Fairchild the knock coming into the season was he struggled at run blocking last year. He was KU's highest graded run blocker in this game, and in the first game, he was one of KU's highest graded run blockers as well. Jared Casey, meanwhile, was KU's highest graded run blocker in

the first game. He was KU's second highest graded run blocker in the second game. So those two were great blocking the run, but also Mason Fairchild had the touchdown. So back-to-back weeks with a touchdown for him. Jared Casey had two catches, and he had that big fourth down grab. That was tough. He had the defender draped all over him, had to be fit in. You see those big hands coming into play for Jared Casey, kind of similar to the two-point conversion against Texas.

So those dudes have been huge for you. And the stats don't jump off the page. I think combined, you're looking at between the two of them, like five catches on the year for less than 50 yards but their impact has been so heavy and then I mentioned the KU offensive line earlier like you could probably give it to kind of all of them because West Virginia their front is really good and they cause Pittsburgh all sorts of issues they held Pittsburgh to under 100 rushing yards. They had five sacks in the game. Well, KU had 200 rushing yards.

KU had zero sacks allowed by the offensive line. They gave up just four TFLs overall for West Virginia, which was really good. But I want to single someone out specifically, Mike Nowitzki. He had the best pass blocking grade on the team on Pro Football Focus. It was over an 82. He had the best run blocking grade on the team on Pro Football Focus. It was over an 82. He had the best run blocking grade among the offensive linemen and obviously leading the middle of that defense at the center. He was big time along with the rest of the offensive line there.

We have some bad goats. There's not a ton in this unit. I would say that the KU pass rush, it just kind of disappeared in that game. That would be kind of a bad goat collectively. Kai Thomas Thomas which I don't know again if this is as much him or just lack of opportunity he only had two carries so who's to say if he had five carries the next three wouldn't have gone for you know 15 yards of five yards a pop or something like that um but certainly it seems like he has kind of fallen off in that running back rotation early on in the season like I said there's going to be more opportunities for those guys as the year goes on and it wouldn't be

shocking to me if the staff plays the hot hand if you have a carry go for 12 yards if you have two carries go for 18 yards and they're like we're going to keep feeding the beast which I think there will still be games in there where Kai Thomas has a big impact but so far through the season has struggled to kind of both create separation and find the right hole as well as create kind of a role in the backfield. You had Kenny Logan miss that bad tackle on the long touchdown. He had one of the bottom three coverage grades, one of the bottom four tackling grades on the team,

and had a PFF grade under 60. So that's back-to-back weeks for Kenny Logan. He hasn't graded out super well in pro football focus. Again, though, take those grades with a grain of salt. It's not everything. The people grading it don't know the play or exactly what they're trying to do. I still think Kenny Logan's a really good player, but certainly with KU getting kind of beat up in the passing game,

Kenny Logan missing that tackle wasn't the best for him. I expect a big bounce back in Week 3. You almost had a bad goat from Daniel Hyshaw. That fumble would have been monumental for West Virginia if they recovered it, and KU probably loses the game if Daniel Hyshaw doesn't recover it, but maybe that puts him back in the good goat for recovering the fumble, even though there was a bad goat for almost losing it. Kobe Bryant almost could have ended up on the bad list here. He was targeted more than any KU defensive back. The only guy who was targeted more was Craig Young for KU,

which if you want to count him a defensive back or linebacker, whatever. But Kobe Bryant was targeted more than any other defensive back for KU in the game. And prior to that pick six, they were six of nine targeting him for 94 yards. Obviously, the pick six turns you into the good goat. But had that pick six not happened, he might have ended up on this list, but made up for it and more with finishing the game off, and obviously that's the one that matters the most.

So he doesn't end up on here. It's just almost. But the biggest bad goat of the game, ESPN Plus broadcast, the inability to mark where the ball was with that graphic, the inability to mark properly where the first down line was, like there was the one where West Virginia, it was like third down, and it looked like, oh, they're like a yard and a half short. Like, great.

And then they show, and then they kind of zoom out, and you can see where the first down line is on the graphic versus where the first down marker is. And it was like two yards apart. What the? So it was just constantly, again, like ESPN Plus just making people pay even more money this year they can't fix the broadcast um the i don't like to i don't like to nitpick it at play-by-play broadcasters as one myself but like the last call of the game is again go listen to the radio broadcast with Brian Haney because it was fantastic. Last call of the game is devoid of as many of the other big calls in the game like any excitement or what's going on,

which is unfortunate because it was such a special moment for KU and you hope that that would be a special moment kind of around it. But KU wins in the end, so good GOAT, everyone on KU. I don't care. Anybody that is just tossing bad goat doesn't matter because you win, and that's the most important thing. In just a moment, we are going to get on to some Lance Leipold stuff with the Nebraska head coach opening because that's become something popular over the weekend here. Keep it locked in on Locked on Jayhawks. Okay, so Scott Frost gets fired from Nebraska they lose the Georgia Southern at home

just a you know another negative in the in the long line of things that have gone on with Scott Frost in Nebraska and Lance Leipold has been brought up by many as a possible candidate to fill the job now most notable like ESPN brought him up, The Athletic brought him up, and a couple of the 24-7 sports sites, Nebraska brought him up, all sorts of places. A couple of the big-name sites, like The Athletic, for instance, not just have him listed in the article about candidates for the job, they have him as the cover photo for the article. And like The Athletic, for instance, the blurb on him is way longer than the other ones. Now, maybe that's just me reading into something stupid

that isn't really that big of a deal, but it's certainly notable with the way that Lance Leipold has turned this thing around. A couple things. One, Lance Leipold's buyout is $5 million. That's not a ton in college football. For instance, Nebraska's buying out Scott Frost at over $15 million.

Do you think they're going to have an issue paying a $5 million buyout? It goes down to $4 million in the middle of December, too. That's not ideal. Lance Leipold also spent over a decade coaching in the Nebraska area. He was an assistant at Nebraska. He was an assistant at Nebraska-Omaha. He has ties to the area. So that's not great. I don't know this for a fact, but I would just say based on the idea that Nebraska is going to

be joining the Big Ten here, based on the fact that they're going to be making all sorts of money, they're just going to have more money to offer, it would probably be hard if you're Lance Leipold, if you get an eight million dollar a year contract offer from Nebraska when you're making three million or whatever it is at Kansas and you would have better facilities in Nebraska and you would have more money to play around with NIL stuff because of that extra money that the school makes from the conference and off football and everything and you have ties there, and your wife is, I forget if it was born or lives or is from Omaha, it would be really hard to turn that

job down. And you can say what you want that, yeah, Nebraska's in shambles and he's getting things going at KU. Okay. But it's tough to turn all that stuff down, especially when you do have, even if they are in shambles, the prestige history of nebraska it just is so the big key here to me is a couple things one the idea that would lance leipold be their first call he is a bit older they might want a younger guy they might want to splash play right like imagine if they went for like urban meyer matt

rule could get fired by the panthers or uh a Matt Campbell come over? Like that's certainly been rumored a lot. There are other guys like Mike Stoops at Kentucky. He has Nebraska ties. So I don't necessarily think Lance Leipold would be number one on the list of the guys they're going for. But what happens if Mike Stoops says, no, I have it rolling at Kentucky. I'm not coming. Matt Campbell says, no, you guys have been kind of a train wreck. I've got things figured out at Iowa State. I'm comfortable here. I'm not coming. Matt Campbell says no. You guys have been kind of a train wreck. I've got things figured out at Iowa State. I'm comfortable here. I'm not coming. And they get down the list to a handful of guys, and then they do get to Lance Leipold.

And at that point, that's got to be pretty scary. We'll see if KU, because they just extended him a week ago. It didn't add to the buyout or anything. It just added an extra year of the contract. We'll see if some donor now at KU is willing to go, hey, I want to pay up. I want to make that buyout bigger, but we're going to pay you more per year. That would not be a terrible idea if you're a big time KU donor. And I'm sure

Travis Goff is already on the phone trying to talk that stuff up. I would be curious from Leipold's perspective, though, because he is someone who seems to genuinely care about how he leaves a program. That was the thing at at Buffalo he mentioned many times the idea that you know I I only left Buffalo because I felt comfortable in the hands that we laid it in like we had turned it into a player-led program we had turned the program around the culture around to a point where we felt like we could leave because we felt like it was in good hands and if you leave Kansas after just year two, when you're just starting to get things going, you would have all sorts of kids transfer away.

You would be ripping out the coaching staff. You would not be leaving it in good hands. Maybe the idea of getting paid so much more money by Nebraska, getting what could, for him, who knows, be a dream job supersedes that. But based on what he's said in the past, maybe that is something that would prevent him from going. And who knows, maybe it would be like a Roy Williams situation, right? Like at first it's like, oh, Roy Williams, he's not going to North Carolina, whenever that was in like the late 90s or something.

He's going to end up staying at KU. And then the second go-around, it opens up again a few years later, and then he takes the job. Like, maybe that could happen. Nebraska hires someone, he's there for a couple years, gets fired again, and then they're like, no, we're going to go to Lightpool now. But that would certainly be crippling for a KU football program that finally is getting things going together once again.

So we'll certainly keep an eye on it. But, I mean, it's weird because you don't want to be like, oh, I'm rooting against this guy who's done such good things in our program to not get a higher paid job and not have an opportunity that he wants. But you're also, if you're a KU fan, you're sitting there going, man, but I hope they hire someone else, right? It's kind of a weird spot to be in. Anyway, that'll do it for today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks.

We're going to be joined by Nick Schwert for tomorrow's edition of the show. If you have anything you'd like for the show to talk about or want to follow along in the action, you can reach out at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter. And don't forget to subscribe to the show so you're getting all the latest with Locked on Jayhawks. That'll do it for today's episode. Have a good rest of your day. I'll see some of you on Rock Chalk Sports Talk later

today. Adios.