Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Three Takeaways From Kansas Jayhawks Football vs Houston: Is Jalon Daniels Back and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, our biggest takeaways from KU's 28-point win over Houston is Jalen Daniels back? 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. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. Thanks for making Locked On Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcasts,

Starting point is 00:00:36 including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. And on today's edition of Locked On Jayhawks, we're getting to our three biggest takeaways from KU's 42-14 victory over the Houston Cougars on Saturday. We'll also get to our top and bottom performers according to Pro Football Focus, maybe some snap counts, some interesting numbers from PFF about what it can tell us for the game and this KU football team. Before we get into any of that action, today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook.

Starting point is 00:01:03 Place your first $5 bet and you'll get started with $200 in bonus bets. Guaranteed. Visit FanDuel.com to get started today. Okay, so Kansas takes down Houston 42-14. Biggest takeaways from the performance for KU, or really last week for KU. Let's start with our number one biggest takeaway. And I asked the question at the start, is Jalen Daniels back?

Starting point is 00:01:26 If you were just viewing it from a lens of the last two weeks, the answer would be yes. I'm not going to quite declare it, but here's what I am going to declare. I am going to declare that I am really close to saying it. The reason that is going to hold me off is that you're playing at Kansas State on Saturday. And furthermore, you're playing three consecutive ranked opponents. So it would be very easy for me to sit here today and say the guy that we saw on Saturday was the guy that we saw in 2022, was the guy that we saw in 2023, and say he is back, baby.

Starting point is 00:01:58 And now there's back-to-back performances that have been good performances with that one being an outstanding performance. And so from that perspective, it would be easy to say he's back, right? And the reasons would be that it just took a little bit into the season to shake the rust off and you're coming off the bye week. And so that was further or the opportunity, I guess, to shake the rust off and get more connected with your offense coordinator and play caller in Jeff Grimes. And you're starting to see him hit more targets, right? You see Jared Casey have two touchdowns.

Starting point is 00:02:28 You see LJ Arnold and Quinton Skinner getting involved as opposed to it mostly being Luke Grimes. You see the running back getting involved out of the backfield as receivers. There's a lot of reasons to think this is true. But the reason I want to wait on this is because what happens if, yeah, three-star ranked opponents, it looks like it did the first part of the season because you can very easily do that. It's not just you're playing three straight ranked opponents that you're playing three straight good defenses with Kansas State, Iowa State,

Starting point is 00:02:52 although Kansas State a little bit better, much better, I should say, against the run than they are the pass. But Iowa State, which is an elite defense, and BYU, which has been a tough physical defense at this point in time. So here's what my, I guess, takeaway, if we want to put it on like a headliner in a sentence, Jalen Daniels is a good game against Kansas State for me declaring he is fully back. So here's Jalen's games according to total QBR, which is the ESPN metric.

Starting point is 00:03:21 It's on a scale of zero to a hundred. And it basically looks at, right? Like it's different than the quarterback ratings, different than total QBR. Total QBR is going to take into account, you know, if it's third down in 10 and you complete a pass for seven yards, it's not going to give you a big positive versus if it's first in 10, you complete a pass for seven yards, like that's a positive, right? And those situations do matter when you're down or fourth quarter like those things matter so uh basically it's been termed this way that based on that performance based on the the total qbr grade you have your team will win the game x amount of the time so if your total qbr is 50 your team's gonna win about 50 50 percent of the time based on that

Starting point is 00:04:01 quarterback performance meaning it pretty much is just going to come down to how everything else around you goes. So here were his performances by total QBR through the first five games of the season. 49 against Lindenwood, then 33, then 51, then 39, then 38. Those are not great numbers. But the last two weeks against Arizona State, the last two games, I should say, 82 total QBR against Arizona State and against Houston. It was a 96 total QBR. That total QBR against Houston, it was Jalen's highest rated game since he had like a 98 against Duke in the 2022 season.

Starting point is 00:04:38 And yes, you can sit here and say, okay, what's the big one? Houston's a two-win team, like blah, blah, blah. You can say what you want about Houston overall, that they're not a great team because they're not, but that is a good defense. Coming in, we talked about it. We looked at the stats. They were top five in the conference in terms of the defensive side of the football, and some of their success rate stuff was top 25 in the country. So you showed it against what actually is a pretty good defense in Houston. And now that's back-to-back weeks where it's looked really good. And like I said, it's not just the stats, it's the eye test. You saw it with some of the throws down, downfield that he had.

Starting point is 00:05:15 You saw it with some of the, you know, taking risks on 50, 50 balls to Quentin Skinner on the touchdown, but we saw some of those 50, 50 ball risks against Illinois turn into interceptions because they were underthrown. Gave them a better chance in this one. The one that I pointed out in the recap show that was vintage Jalen to me was the one where he ends up rolling to the off side of his – so to his left, the offhand side, I should say, and throws a dart kind of to the sideline coming back, curling back to the ball to Trevor Wilson,

Starting point is 00:05:43 who makes a nice catch at the sideline and gets his feet inbounds like that was really impressive for what Jalen did and so uh the eye test kind of backed it up and uh obviously the key to being back and further reason why beyond the the ranked opponents thing where it could easily you know fall back off is that it is I guess the key to being you know what Jalen was or or what Jalen might be again isn't just can you show it in a flash it's can you be consistent at it right this level of the collegiate level the pro level whatever you want to look at like anybody is capable of having one good game you know or I guess most players are capable of having one good game what separates the best players is that they can consistently have those good games.

Starting point is 00:06:27 So you go back to 2022, Jalen had a total QBR above 70 in seven of his nine games. Consistency there, right? You look at the 2023 season, all three of his games in 2023, he had a total QBR above a 70. So that's consistency. You've now seen it in back-to-back weeks. Can you get it for a third straight week with the Kansas State game against a good defense? Again, they're better against the run than they are against the pass,

Starting point is 00:06:52 but still overall good defense that will mix things up that is going to be complex, complicated in how they go about you. And furthermore, like what happens if you don't have a 96 pass blocking grade in front of you like they had this past game, which you're probably not going to have because you're playing against some of these good defenses like K-State and Iowa State and BYU. So bottom line, if Jalen Daniels has another strong performance this Saturday against Kansas State, I'm ready to say he's back. All right, let's get to takeaways number two, takeaways number three in a moment on Locked on Jayhawks. Our episode today is brought to you by Roy,

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Starting point is 00:08:37 with no subscriptions and no fees. Be sure to check us out on Instagram, Facebook, and X at Roy underscore return on you for more info. Roy, support the players. Change the game. That is Roy. On to our second and third takeaways from the KU game. Let's get to number two.

Starting point is 00:08:58 Brian Borland adjusted, and he was rewarded. I think a fair criticism that you could have in a lot of games or a lot of, I don't know, overall seasons for KU and with Brian Borland has been that maybe they haven't adjusted enough. Maybe they haven't made those in-game adjustments fast enough or that at times they've been too passive. And I think they came out of the bye week as the aggressor in this football game and you saw it in the stat sheet when you saw Kansas it felt like they were blitzing more often in this game I actually have some numbers on that

Starting point is 00:09:35 to kind of back that up so we'll get to that in a second but Kansas wound up with six sacks they wound up with 12 tackles for loss they wound up up with four interceptions. They wound up with 17 pressures. You would take any of those numbers in any specific game. Probably would like the pressures to be even higher than that, to be completely honest, around 20. But when you're working with a crop where Kansas has not been a great pass rushing team, you have to manufacture it some way. So out of comparison, the Arizona State and the TCU game,

Starting point is 00:10:03 so your two previous games, you had 19 total pressures in the two games combined you had 17 pressures in this game and then six sacks 12 tfls four interceptions the crazy thing is ku was only graded a 58 in pass rush in this game according to pro football focus so is that just a misstep by PFF? Possible. It's also possible that it tells me something else. It tells me that the individual pass rush wasn't much better from where it's been in past games. It tells me that when you were rushing three, four guys, your standard rushes, you still weren't really winning much more or at a higher rate than you had been on the season.

Starting point is 00:10:43 The reason that you just got all sorts of chaotic plays and pressures and sacks is because you brought extra players. And so like, you're not going to like, if you bring seven blitzers, you know, there's only so many guys that are blocking or if you bring six blitzers, there's only so many guys that are blocking.

Starting point is 00:11:02 So like, they're not going to get a negative pass blocking grade. If one guy goes unblocked to the quarterback, because, you know, the other five were being blocked by five guys, right? Like what, what do you want them to do? Do you want the left tackle to duplicate and become two players? Like you can't. And the same goes on the other side. Like, you know, I don't know that that's going to boost your pass rush grade. If you just have a guy running free because he was unblocked, like technically that doesn't go down as like a, an awesome play for PFF.

Starting point is 00:11:30 I believe that would be the case in their scoring system. So that to me is why the pass rush grade, despite the fact that the production, the sacks were elite in that game for KU, why the pass rush grade doesn't necessarily echo that, that you were blitzing more. And then if we dive into pro football focus, snap counts, this is what backs this up, which again, just, I think for a lot of people watching, you would sit there and say, yeah, I felt like they blitzed more. Well, again,

Starting point is 00:11:52 here's the numbers. KU got 24 pass rush snaps from non-defensive linemen. So from like Cornell Wheeler, Tywon Berryhill, JB Brown, Marvin Gray, right? Non-defensive lineman, KU got 24 pass rush snaps from those players in this game. If we go back to the Arizona State game, KU got just eight snaps from non-defensive linemen rushing the passer, including just one from J.B. Brown in the Arizona State game. He had six against Houston, so a lot more. Now, I would imagine in the Arizona State game, probably a little bit harder to pass rush J.B. Brown as much because

Starting point is 00:12:27 like with Cornell Wheeler out for the Arizona state game, it's like you have one less, like you need J.B. Brown to be more of a traditional linebacker maybe because Wheeler's out. I don't know. That would just be my assumption. But overall, before the Houston game, so the first six games of the season, KU averaged 12 non-defensive line pass rush snaps per game, meaning against Houston they doubled their average. And it was an awesome game for the defense overall. It was creating pressure. When you don't have an Austin Booker on your team,

Starting point is 00:13:00 I think the fact that KU maybe was a little bit more passive made more sense on last year's team when you had Austin Booker, although given the corners that KU has, you probably still do want to be aggressive with those guys. But, you know, on this year's team, you almost have to say, hey, we're going to be aggressive. And now the question becomes if this was just because of the bye week or just because who they were playing, given the matchup against Houston, where you thought that they weren't a great throwing football team, so you wanted to blitz to stop the run and tackle the quarterback

Starting point is 00:13:29 before he scrambled away. Are you going to continue that? I think they should because you look at K-State, like they have an elite running game. Keep it going. Try to stop the run. And, yeah, they'll probably beat you on a couple big plays because you're being more risky.

Starting point is 00:13:43 But I'd rather them beat you on a couple big plays, but you make some big plays back, as opposed to just getting carved up all game like the TCU game, even though they did have a couple interceptions in that one. All right, our third and final takeaway here, even with a win, KU's bad start to the season is still going to make things tougher on the recruiting trail. So this wasn't necessarily specific to Saturday,

Starting point is 00:14:03 but over the weekend, Juju Marks decommitted and flipped to Nebraska. So Marks is 6'6", 290-pound offensive tackle. He was top 400 recruit nationally on the 24-7 composite. Three-star on just the 24-7 grades, but still an 89. Most of that, I think, is potential. This is a guy who at 6'6", 290, clearly has the frame to be a power five, power four, whatever, offensive lineman. A player who, first he was going to be a D lineman, now offensive lineman.

Starting point is 00:14:36 Most of that is potential. I do think that it definitely could be a situation where Juju Marks ends up not providing much on the field, wherever he goes to college. But also I remember there were some questions about the on-field production of like Calvin Clements necessarily, but Calvin Clements had the projectable body, ended up coming to KU and they coached him up and seems like he's going to have a very promising career for KU.

Starting point is 00:15:04 So it's possible that would happen to Juju Marks. That said, I do think Calvin Clements was probably known, if you look at some of the scouting report stuff, for having high motor, being a highly intelligent player, whereas Juju Marks, I don't know that motor has been in the strengths column for him. So I don't know, maybe that's a different there. But point being, there's a high potential in-state kid. And that was part of it, the in-state part of it that uh really resonated that you know could it help you with other players

Starting point is 00:15:30 i don't know uh but at the moment ku currently ranks 15th of 16 teams in recruiting ranking even if you go by average ranking because maybe ku doesn't have as many commits as the other teams because they're gonna leave spots open for the portal they're still just 14th ku's never going to be you know an elite recruiting team. And for Lance Leipold, it always is just kind of about development and finding the diamonds in the rough, and that is always going to be what's more important. But you'd like to be a little bit higher than one of the bottom three

Starting point is 00:15:56 or bottom two in the conference. So are there going to be others? Are there going to be other players decommitting? One of their tight end commits already was visiting Mississippi State, even though he's committed to KU. So it kind of becomes interesting. It certainly doesn't make it easier to keep guys committed or to add new high school players. How does this affect your portal ability in the offseason? And so that's why even if you don't reach your lofty goals of winning the Big 12 or competing for the Big 12 title, which they're not at this point, it's still

Starting point is 00:16:22 important to win more games. It's still important to build more momentum and not just completely bottom out because it does matter from the recruiting perspective. It's not the NFL where once you miss out on the playoffs, it's like, oh no, just lose the rest of your games, get a higher draft pick. You don't get a higher draft pick. You need to keep winning. That is one of the positives and negatives of college football that the worst teams aren't really rewarded. It's tougher to get off the mat, but the positive of that is it makes it so that even if, you know, you are having a bad season, you still do have stuff to play for. And that recruiting is certainly one of them.

Starting point is 00:16:55 So that'll be something to keep an eye on there. Let's get to our top and bottom PFF performers in the KU Houston game. This is Locked on Jayhawks. This episode is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Hey, NFL fans, you can start the season with a big return on FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play,

Starting point is 00:17:16 and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. You can get in on Kansas-Kansas State. KU getting about 10 points right now. The line's been fluctuating a lot since it opened up a little bit early on. You can get some player props later in the week. Also, NBA is back tonight. They got some cool promos going on over at FanDuel, including

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Starting point is 00:17:59 We talked about him having that good game. He was a 91, according to PFF in this one. So big game for him. Savion Morrison, only eight snaps, but props to him. He had a 83 grade, so balled out in the limited numbers. And he might become more important this week. Daniel Hyshaw sounds like he's going to be questionable for the K-State game. You would really miss that physical running ability that he brings to spell Devin Neal.

Starting point is 00:18:21 But maybe that means more of a load for Savion Morrison. And maybe he could step up. I'd imagine it might just mean like 25 carries for Devin Neal, but maybe that means more of a load for Savion Morrison, and maybe he could step up. I'd imagine it might just mean like 25 carries for Devin Neal, but still some snaps for Savion Morrison. Lawrence Arnold was third. He had a 79.5 grade. Cole Ballard was fourth. That's in five snaps and just like handed the ball off.

Starting point is 00:18:39 So I'd imagine that's more of just a default grade. Quentin Skinner at a 69 was tied fourth. And then the next one would be Jared Casey, who had a 67. Your highest graded offensive lineman was Logan Brown, who had a 66. He had an 87 in pass blocking. That's what's interesting in this one. The pass blocking, as I mentioned, was like a 96 for KU. Brown was at an 87.

Starting point is 00:18:59 Michael Ford and Kobe Baines were at 79s. Bryce Foster, 77. Devin Neal, a 76. Bryce Cabledew and Daniel Hyshaw were both above 70. But the run blocking, nobody was above a 64 in run blocking for KU in this game. And actually, your two highest graded run blockers and three of your top four were receivers, LJ Arnold, Quentin Skinner, Luke Grimm.

Starting point is 00:19:19 So they did a good job blocking in this game. As far as the bottom five offensive players for KU per PFF, Tevita Noah had just a 44. He was a 46 in run blocking, which were 11 of his 16 snaps. That's why Daryl Simmons played just five snaps. He had a 51 grade. He had a penalty. I mean, when you have a penalty in five snaps,

Starting point is 00:19:38 that's going to tank your grade. So small sample size wouldn't put too much into that one. Leighton Cure, same kind of thing, just six snaps for him. He had a 55 grade. Bryce Cabledew was near the bottom. He actually had a 70.5 pass block grade, though. It's because he had a 57 run block grade, but he overall did a good enough job running the football that, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:19:56 I don't think that was probably deserving of a 56 grade for Bryce Cabledew. And same goes for Kobe Baines, had a 57 grade but like 79 in pass blocking and again 58 run blocking but KU did well run blocking or I mean running the football against a Houston team who had a good run defense coming in so again I don't know that I'm buying that number on uh Kobe Baines as far as the snap count stuff um we got to see a little bit of some of the young guys like Calvin Clements got five snaps, mentioned Cole Ballard played, Nolan Gorchika played a handful of snaps. That was the beauty of getting the big win there.

Starting point is 00:20:29 We did get to see double-digit snaps for Trevor Wilson in this one. I thought it was interesting Trevor Cardell and Jared Casey played close to equal snaps. We hadn't really been seeing that. Casey was at 34, Cardell was at 32. And as far as the defensive side of the football for KU their highest rated defender was you'll be shocked by this one the guy who had three interceptions with Kobe Bryant he had an 84 defensive grade he also had an 84 coverage grade he was targeted six times at three

Starting point is 00:20:58 interceptions in the past breakup that's uh pretty pretty good work for Kobe Bryant second was Dean Miller he had four pressures in the game for KU and a 72 overall grade third was Dylan Downing small sample size but cool to see walk on coming in and playing well and that's sample 72 grade fourth JB Brown he was an animal all game long 71 overall grade uh but I'm looking at 83 and run defense, 83 and a half in tackling, 69 in pass rush. He got a 54 in pass coverage, which was 24 snaps. Again, just pass rush him even more. Why not? Melo Dotson was fifth.

Starting point is 00:21:33 So when you have two corners who are in your top five, that's going to be a good thing for pass defense. He had a 69 overall grade. And interesting in this one was that, you know, for most games teams target Melo Dotson and not Kobe Bryant. Houston tried Kobe Bryant and not really Melo. Melo only had one target against him. But they found out what happens when you target Kobe Bryant because he had the three interceptions in that game.

Starting point is 00:21:56 As far as the tackling grade, J.B. Brown had the best grade. Marvin Grant was second. Cornell Wheeler was third. So I see him back. Coverage grade, Kobe was first. Jeremy Robinson had one coverage snap. He was second. Mello was third.

Starting point is 00:22:07 How about Tywon Berryhill? He was fourth. This was, well, okay. Let's get to the bottom grades here. So Jason Gilliam was at the bottom, 19 snaps, 51 grade. Second to last with Tywon Berryhill. I will say this, though. Not a great game overall, 57 grade for Tywon Berryhill. I will say this though, not a great game overall, 57 grade for

Starting point is 00:22:26 Taiwan Berryhill, but he had a 66 coverage grade and a 57 is one of his better performances of the season. In fact, it's his best of the last three games. So still not bad. Then you look at Caleb Taylor having a 57 and 26 snaps, DJ Warner at a 58 and 25 snaps as he continues to get more time. Taylor Davis had to fill in as the starting safety. Ended up with 42 snaps at a 58.5 coverage grade, which considering what he was vaulted into with basically three safeties in front of him on the depth chart out, all things pretty good for him. But Miller had four pressures.

Starting point is 00:23:03 J.B. Brown had three. Davis and Withers each had two. So Davis can be kind of a pass rusher around the edge too. As far as missed tackles, only one guy missed two. So that was good to see with Jason Gilliam. KU only missed seven tackles in this game. That's a good number to be at. You got to be able to do that against K-State in this game. And then as far as the snap counts of note for KU, you know, as you're looking down Taiwan, Berryhill still had 51 snaps in this game. JB Brown had 47. Cornell Wheeler had 25. I would imagine after getting him integrated a little bit more with Wheeler back in the action, K-State up this weekend, wouldn't be shocked if Berryhill

Starting point is 00:23:37 and Wheeler are swapped this week, or at the very least, it comes a little bit closer together. We'll see what happens at that safety position. We also got to see Caleb Purdy for 26 snaps. I did mention him that I noticed he, it looked like he was the one who gave up that wheel route touchdown and then he had a penalty on him later. He graded actually pretty okay on PFF, 66 overall grade, 74 tackling.

Starting point is 00:23:59 It did not credit him with being the one who gave up that touchdown though. I don't know who got credit for that. So if it would have been his mistake, then I don't know how that would have affected the grade, but I don't know who they necessarily dinged that one on, to say the least. Also, we saw by Job for 11 snaps, and he ended up with a pressure. So some interesting ones to keep an eye on there.

Starting point is 00:24:20 All right, that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. We'll be back tomorrow. We're going to have a KU basketball season preview, the beginner's guide to the 2024 to 2025 season. Don't miss it. Make sure you're subscribed right here with Locked on Jayhawks. See you then.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Three Takeaways From Kansas Jayhawks Football vs Houston: Is Jalon Daniels Back and More

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