Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Perfect Time for a Bye Week for Kansas Jayhawks Football As QB Jalon Daniels Recovers from Injury

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Why the bye came at a perfect time for Kansas Jayhawks football to get players healthier like quarterback Jalon Daniels, the Defensive End group, the running backs and more, to get more ready for the Oklahoma Sooners. What would a good next 3 game record look like for KU and Lance Leipold's team? What's ahead now that crossover season is upon us with Kansas Jayhawks basketball and Bill Self's team joining the fold on Sunday against the Illinois Fighting Illini.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!eBay MotorsWith all the parts you need at the prices you want, it’s easy to turn your car into the MVP and bring home that win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers.Athletic BrewingGo to AthleticBrewing.com and enter code LOCKEDON to get 15% off your first online order or find a store near you! Athletic Brewing. Milford, CT and San Diego, CA. Near Beer.PrizePicksGo to PrizePicks.com/lockedoncollege and use code lockedoncollege for a first deposit match up to $100! Daily Fantasy Sports Made Easy!GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase.Jase MedicalGet $20 off these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com.LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS – GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, Big Noon is coming to Kansas. What the bye week hopefully helped out with for KU football headed into, at this point, their biggest game of the season against the Oklahoma Sooners. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Derek Johnson, you can hear me as well, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day.

We're free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. You can find us on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. If you're on a podcast platform that allows reviews, give us a positive one if you could. It really helps us out on our end of things. On today's episode of Locked on Jayhawks, we're talking KU football coming off the bye week. What the bye hopefully could have done for KU football

headed into a gigantic matchup with Oklahoma on big noon this Saturday. What the next three games could look like because it's, it's this sprint to the finish line now with five to go, but three games of 4k state. And I think this is going to be a really important, I guess, third,

if you view it that way or quarter of the season from there. And then the week ahead, because it's a big week ahead, we're getting into crossover season, KU football and KU basketball. First, this episode of locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by PrizePix. Go to prizepix.com slash lockedoncollege.

Use code lockedoncollege for a first deposit match up to $100. Daily fantasy sports made easy with PrizePix. Okay, what the buy could have done for KU? Obviously, the cool announcement earlier this weekend that KU will be getting Big Noon, which is the Fox, basically, edition of College Game Day. They're going to be the 11 a.m. game Central Time, but noon Eastern Time for the game between Kansas and Oklahoma in Lawrence. And the festivities, the fanfare, you know,

it's a crew with like Brady Quinn and Urban Meyer. And Mark Ingram replaced Reggie Bush this year on the show. And they've got Matt Liner on the show. And, you know, in some ways, like, I don't know, a lot of people have kind of been talking this year that college game day just hasn't really felt the same maybe the last couple of years. And there are a couple of reasons why people have their reasoning for, and everybody can have their own thing.

I watched a full episode, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, and I just, I felt like it wasn't the same. Like there wasn't as much like breaking downs of the games. I don't know. Maybe that's just me misthinking. Nonetheless, Big Noon is an excellent show. And it is starting to eat a little bit into what College Game Day is doing. Who knows?

Maybe in 20 years it ends up being the bigger thing. I don't know. But either way, it's another cool show and another cool opportunity for KU to get plugged and everything. So you come off the bye week against Oklahoma, and there are a lot of ways that this team needed the bye week. I think Kirby Smart said a week or two ago he's never met a bad bye week. He's never had a bye week at a bad time.

Bye weeks are always good, and that's the case. No matter what, you're going to have players injured. You're going to have different things you can work on, different things you can get extra game plan for. And that's definitely true for Kansas, but this is about as perfect as you could ask for. I think if you asked a coach, they'd probably prefer to have the bye week at this point of the season, kind of midway through than they would after the like second or third week of the year where then you have to play, you know, 10 straight games without a bye week.

So on that hand, it's a positive. It's before, at this point, your biggest game of the season with Oklahoma. And I guess arguably the best team you're playing all season long because you beat Texas. And on top of that, you have some injuries that you're trying to overcome that this could coincide at the perfect situation. And that's the first part of the bye week typically, and it is this year as well, getting players healthy, something that it could help Kansas with coming into this weekend.

Now, this both applies for players that we do know are injured and that we don't know are injured. And as far as the don't know injured players, like there are certain players that are probably banged up or dealing with bumps and bruises that we don't even know about because there is no injury report. This isn't like the NFL. It's either you're out and then we find out about it or we hear about it.

You're like, why is this guy not on the field? Or you play through it, you know? And we don't really get to hear about some of those things that it could be, you know, affecting certain players' performances. Maybe a player had a bad game because he was dealing with an injury or he was dealing with a sickness and you just didn't know about it, right? And that's what makes, I think, college football maybe even a little bit harder to analyze what some of the individual player performances kind of did on a week-to-week basis. But then obviously there are players that we do know about. And the biggest one happens to be your quarterback, the preseason Big 12 player of the year with Jalen Daniels. Now, the Lance Leipold media from earlier today did not sound overly encouraging.

It did say that he was doing more this week and now in practice than he was maybe a couple weeks ago. He still classified Lance Leipold as doubtful slash questionable, which to be clear, those are very different things. Usually when you see doubtful on an NFL injury designation, it's like a 1% thing, 2% thing, where it feels like the player actually plays after being listed doubtful. Maybe the number's too low, but it feels like it's a very small percentage.

Whereas questionable does really feel like a 50-50 proposition. Like those tend to be very different things. Maybe this is Lance Leipold trying to gain some sort of competitive edge. You know, we've talked about that early in the season when you're playing like an FCS team and a coach is very secretive about the quarterback position. We're like, why are you doing this? It's an FCS team.

You should beat them with your fifth string quarterback. With this game, it maybe makes a little bit more sense with Oklahoma, right? So that is something that's kind of very interested in, interested here. And for a coach like Brent Venables, who has been known nationally as being like arguably the best sign stealer in college football, like he is a very crafty, wise dude as a coach like Brent Venables, who has been known nationally as being arguably the best sign stealer in college football. He is a very crafty, wise dude as a coach. You don't want to give him anything extra. He's already a good enough coach.

He's already crafty enough on his own end of things. So I guess that could make sense. Maybe he does end up playing this Saturday. I have no idea. But it sounds like there's a chance, though maybe it's 50-50. I don't know. I don't know. Now, as far as the defense fans, that was a position group

that's really been banged up here. Partial practice, it sounds like, for Hayden Hatcher. So maybe that one's still a little bit iffy, but a week off couldn't hurt there. I think Jeremy Robinson, Austin Booker were dealing with some stuff, so you figure the week off helps them there. I think the defensive end position in totality probably will gain the most from this.

Never hurts for your running backs or your skilled players to get a little more fresh legs. We saw that last year. Devin Neal coming off the bye week was awesome against Oklahoma State, so that doesn't hurt either. Unfortunately, we do have some injury news. Andrew Russell, who's a good special teams player, and Logan Brown, who was your offensive tackle,

you brought in his former five-star recruit at Wisconsin. He is out for the rest of the season with an injury. They're going to apply for a medical redshirt for Brown. That hurts a little bit of your depth on the offensive line, but Brown wasn't really able to retain much of a spot in the rotation or in the starting five or in the lineup or anything for this year. So hopefully you can get the medical red shirt and you can still have two more years at Kansas because the ceiling obviously still high on Logan Brown. Beyond that, the bye

week also gives you extra prep time for a Oklahoma high tempo offense. We saw last season, Kansas really struggled against high tempo teams. Whether it was Oklahoma, he gave up 52 points to, or it was the Texas Tech game where he gave up like over 40 points in that game. There were a lot of games where KU played high tempo teams and it wore them down and they had trouble. You look to the TCU game,

you got 31 points or whatever it was, 28 points in the second half. Tempo caused Kansas problems last year. Now, so far this year, you haven't had to deal with tempo as much. Like with the UCF game, you just played great defense like all the way through,

and they struggled to really get momentum. They weren't like an always tempo team. Oklahoma State ran a little bit of tempo, and that gave you some trouble. Oklahoma's eighth in the country in plays per game, at about 78 plays per game. They get up there. They run fast. Good news is you have the bye week to try to work on some of those things.

Beyond that, it's also extra prep for the Oklahoma multiple defense. And the Oklahoma defense has been very good so far this season. Last year, they really struggled. This year, another year under Brent Venables, very good. And Venables is an exotic defensive type. I mean, the scheme, there's guys coming from all over. You don't know who's blitzing. You don't know who the down linemen are. It's very complicated, very complex, very tough to figure out. So having an extra week to get prepped for a very versatile and very talented and very, I mean, productive to this point defense

doesn't hurt either. Also doesn't hurt that it's extra time in the lab for Andy Kotelnicki and some of the things that he can kind of keep speed up and then I think just in refocusing after a loss to Oklahoma State you know it's always when you hear from players when you lose a game like that whole week leading up next to it's like the very next day you're already hungry you're chomping at the bit to get back out on the field because you want to get the bad taste out of your mouth. You want to get that loss out of your mouth. You want to get back to your winning ways.

And when you have the bye weekend between loss, especially a game like the Oklahoma State game where you feel like you could have won and you did a lot of things that you kind of shot yourself in the foot in a couple areas. It almost makes you like hungrier for this game. You already were hungry. You already were going to try to win, and you, of course, want to beat Oklahoma. But it almost makes you even more revved up coming in

because you're trying to get that bad taste out of your mouth, and you've had to sit with it now for a couple weeks. By the way, if KU does lose to Oklahoma, they would be 5-3, obviously. Their three losses at this point would probably be the top three teams in the Big 12. Like Texas and Oklahoma feel like the top two. I toyed with it.

I pondered with the idea. Is Oklahoma State the third best team in the Big 12? I mean, they beat K-State. They beat KU. Then they just won on the road against West Virginia. I feel like you have to pick them. So the good news is that wouldn't be a huge deal if you lost in your 5-3. When you look at it that way, the bad news would be eventually you do have

to beat some of those teams up at the top to kind of level up your program. And also that's a negative because your schedule features all those types of teams, and it makes the win output kind of in question. But yeah, just refocusing in general after the loss to Oklahoma State, another positive from the bye week that you hope KU takes into this week against Oklahoma. We're going to get on to what would be a good record for KU in these next three games

before they have the K-State game. I think you're looking at most important games or biggest games of the season remaining. Maybe most important still is K-State local recruiting aspect and all that stuff. But certainly it'd either be Oklahoma or K-State. So let's look at the next three games before that and over the final two for kind of a KU record call with Locked on Jayhawks. All right, so KU takes on Oklahoma on Saturday. And then after that, they'll be going on the road against Iowa State, which, by the way, they announced they're going to do, like,

the six-day flex schedule thing. I hate it when they do that stuff. So we won't find out the time. At least it's a road game. So maybe you're not going to the game. And if you are going to the game, then you were making the road trip up there anyway. So you probably have all day figured out. But anyway, we'll find out that game time until Sunday. And then the next day we should find out the next game, which will be KU back at home against Texas Tech. So those are your next three games, and then you finish up at Kansas State and at home again or on the road against Cincinnati.

The, I guess, UCF-Oklahoma game that just happened this past Saturday where UCF nearly beat Oklahoma. They missed a two-point conversion to try to tie the game late. They were leading for different moments in the third quarter at 2017, 23-17. You obviously smacked UCF. Now, we can play it the other way with the transitive property too, right? You can play the transitive property of KU dominated UCF, beaten by 30,

and then UCF nearly beat Oklahoma. You can also play the transitive property OU beat Texas, and Texas smacked Kansas, right? So it's hard to figure out, and there are different things that go into this, whether it's styles making fights, college kids being up for a certain game, maybe not being up for another game. John Rhys Plumlee was a lot better and healthier, obviously, in the Oklahoma game. Will Jalen Daniels play? Will Jason Dean play?

How did that affect those other games and those other reference points, right? There are different ways. Kansas is a better running team offensively than Oklahoma is. And I think that takes more advantage of the UCF defense. UCF, I think is probably better like speed defense than they are running defense. They're not as physical. So, you know, maybe they're a better matchup for Oklahoma, right? There are a lot of things that you don't just look at that and go,

oh, well, they only lost by two. Kansas should win this game. But seeing another team do that, that should give you confidence that OU is not Michigan, where Michigan is just beating every Big Ten team they play. They haven't played one of the Penn States or Ohio States yet, so we'll see what they do there. But when they're playing any of the teams that are even close to receiving votes or even decent in the Big Ten, they're just pile driving. They're beating them 56-0 every game or 49-10 or something.

That's not what is happening for Oklahoma. That's not what we've seen from the top teams in the Big 12, that every game really is winnable or losable depending on which side of the coin you're on. And then you look at how the last two seasons went. You lose by 10 in Norman in a game that felt like – if you compared the two, the game two years ago in Lawrence where you lose by 12, if in a game that felt like, like if you compared the two, the game two years ago in Lawrence,

where you lose by 12, if you remember weird game, like the power went out in the first quarter, you ended up leading at halftime. Oklahoma only had like two possessions of the football or something like that. And then Oklahoma came back. Devin Neal has like the fourth and goal touchdown.

It felt like you might win the game. Caleb Williams goes off in the fourth quarter. Then the play that was controversial with you takes the ball from the running back and moves forward on the first down on what would have been Kansas football at the OU 40 down 28-23 with like three minutes left. That game was actually closer than the game last year, but the game last year ended up with a closer score. That game, Kansas was always kind of down 14-17-21 and just kind of close strong, but kept moving the ball offensively. But because you played them well the last two years at least,

you were competitive in both those games, because of that game last week through UCF Oklahoma, that should give you at least a little bit of confidence that you can hang in there and maybe have a shot at this thing. It is tough because typically really good teams like Oklahoma, if they have a week where they don't have the best performance, which is how I would classify UCF, they usually typically bounce back. They don't have bad performances back to back, but I guess you never really know.

So what would be a realistic thought or a realistic record over these next three? Because if you are viewing this as a game of against Oklahoma, yeah, I just, I don't know how I can get around to winning the game against a top-five team. Then all of a sudden, you almost view one and two as realistic, where you say, well, Texas Tech and Iowa State, could we be favored in both? I don't know. That Iowa State might be like a coin flip. They might be favored by three.

We might be favored by three. It depends what happens with OU. And then you look at the Texas Tech game at home. I'd imagine Kansas will be favored in that one. But what happens if you're coming off losses at Iowa State and Oklahoma where you'd have at that point four straight losses going into the Texas Tech game? Then what happens going into that one? So maybe you just view it as you go one and one between Iowa State and Tech.

And because your underdogs by like 11 points to OU, maybe that means one and two is realistic here over this next stretch of games, which would put you at six and four. It would put you at bowl eligibility and it would put you at a shot to, even if you split the last two, you have a win improvement from the year before

and you finish with a winning record, you hit the over on the win totals, right? That puts you in line to still accomplish a lot from what we talked about in the preseason. If you can go two and one though over these next three, that would be big time because that either means you beat Oklahoma, which would be the biggest win of the Lance Leipold era so far, or it would mean that you took care of business with the other two

and you were going into the K-State game at 7-3, which at that point with, again, your three losses there would be probably the three best teams in the Big 12, and you would maybe even be ranked again. The one thing you have to avoid here is 0-3. You cannot drop the 5-5 and put all your pressure of making it to a bowl game on winning on the road on a senior day at Cincinnati or beating K-State at home, a team you've really struggled with in this series.

So 1-2 is acceptable. It can get the job done. 2-1, I think you're ecstatic. Obviously, if you go 3-0, if you win this game against Oklahoma, it resets the expectations. And all of a sudden, if you do upset Oklahoma, now you are favored against Iowa State. Now you're favored by more against Texas Tech. And maybe we

readjust the expectations and say, man, if they can get to 3-0, right? But it all counts on this game, and it's tough. Obviously, if you do beat Oklahoma, it completely changes the trajectory of the season. You lose this game to Oklahoma, like maybe you're kind of expected to with the books,

being underdogs by 11 points. It's more of, yeah, just, you know, what good bowl game can you get to? Can you get back to bowl eligibility? Can you win more games than you did a season ago? If you win this game, this would be the type of game that changes how we view this Lance Leipold program

from now they're a decent football team, now they're competitive football team to one where we would go no the Lance Leipold era is here as this is one of the top teams in the Big 12 and they have shown they can beat one of those top teams in the Big 12 and that's why I think if Kansas could beat Oklahoma on Saturday it would be the biggest win I know you have the Texas win in 2021 and everything that started up I know you have the Oklahoma State win last year that got them bowl eligible or some of the other wins that they've had along the way. You beat Oklahoma on Saturday. It would be the biggest win in the Atlanta Light Bowl era.

It would be the biggest win for Kansas football since when? The Orange Bowl season? The win in the Orange Bowl against Virginia Tech, right? Shock the world. Get it done. But, yeah, over the next three, one and two doable, two and one, I think you feel really good about. We're going to continue on with some more

KU football talk, but also some KU basketball talk about to be in crossover season here with Locked on Jayhawks. First, this episode of the show is brought to you by PrizePix. PrizePix is the most fun you can have winning up to 25 times money a season. This football season, but they also have a bunch of other sports too. You just select two or more players, up to six.

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saturday like i said i i think it would be the biggest win for the ku football program in at least 15 or 16 years uh maybe you want to go back to the 08 season and pick a game from that year when which they ended up winning the inside bowl but But I really do think it would be that big that you go back to the orange bowl win over Virginia tech, which obviously that one would be bigger, but that would be the capping point from when you go back to. But this is also going to be the start of like crossover season. So this week is going to be KU women's and men's basketball media day.

Later this week, then on Sunday KU takes on Illinois in KU basketball's first exhibition game. It will be televised. I think it's on 5 p.m., 4 p.m., something like that on Sunday. So I know for some people, it'll be a little bit of a bear that you'll have that game kind of going on the same time as the Chiefs game, because it's going to be playing on Sunday. But KU Illinois, Illinois, for my money, is a top 25 team in the country. They might be even better than that. But don't overreact to what happens on Sunday, right? Last year, I think Illinois ended up in a secret scrimmage. I guess the rumor was in the secret scrimmage.

Illinois beat Kansas by one, or it was a tie or something. Illinois ended up getting a nine seed. Kansas ended up getting a one seed. It's the first game of the year. Also, if it's a top 25 team on the road if if you said in the middle of January Kansas went on the road against the top 25 big 12 team and lost you would just view it as as like okay that's just part of what happens so if Kansas loses this just because it's the first game and it's the only sample size you have

it probably is going to make you overthink it'd be like oh are they the number one team in the country I'm just telling you over the course of the season, if you played on the road against top 25 team, chances are you're going to lose a couple of those games. It's the first one of the year. Don't overreact if they lose this game because it is a losable game. Illinois is a good team and it's on the road in an exhibition event. That said, it should be a lot of fun and you're going to see where we're going to get into our preview later this week and things we're kind of watching for and things I expect in the game.

We're about to be in crossover season. It's exciting. KU basketball, KU football, plenty of content coming at you all throughout the week and all throughout the upcoming seasons here with Locked on Jayhawks. That'll do it for this episode of the show. You can find us anywhere you get any of your podcasts, including on our YouTube page. See you next time with LOJ.