Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Three Takeaways from Kansas Jayhawks Loss to UNLV: Passing Struggles, Tommy Dunn Breakout & More

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, the three biggest takeaways from KU's loss to UNLV. 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 find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. You can tune in to the show. It's called Locked on Jayhawks. Anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page, where you can like and subscribe to the show.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Thank you to the everydayers tuning in to each and every episode. Thank you for making it your first listen every day. We're getting into our three biggest takeaways from the Kansas loss to UNLV. We're going to get a little bit into Jalen Daniels. What is going on there with the passing game? A little bit about a possible breakout star on the defensive end of the football and plenty more. Plus, we'll get into our top and bottom performers,

Starting point is 00:00:54 according to Pro Football Focus, and what that can kind of tell us from that said KU UNLV game. First, this episode of the show is brought to you by 5-Hour Energy. Go to 5hourenergy.com and use promo code LOCKEDONCFB to receive 20% off your order. Again, LOCKEDONCFB. Okay, so three biggest takeaways. Let's start with takeaway number one from KU's three-point loss to UNLV. Well, number one is that it turns out the Illinois game was not an aberration.

Starting point is 00:01:26 Turns out the Illinois game was not an exception to the rule. And realistically, I could probably say that about the entirety of what things meant as far as the game goes. But I want to specifically focus on the passing offense. I guess if you want to rephrase this as my takeaway number one is that the passing offense has questions and real problems because as as problematic as it was in the Illinois game right you average basically under five yards per pass attempt you average more run rush yards per attempt than you did pass yards per attempt you threw three interceptions the passing game was not good against Illinois at least it was okay but it's a small sample size. It's one game.

Starting point is 00:02:05 If you bounce back the next game or early in the season, you'll be able to look back at that game and just say, oh, it was just the exception to the rule. Now that it has happened back-to-back games and the turnovers, I guess, went down, so that's good. And, I mean, overall, the first half was probably better. Like you saw flashes, at least, in the first half that were better than maybe more of what you saw in the Illinois game as a whole.

Starting point is 00:02:27 But still, the fact that the second half felt worse than anything you saw in the Illinois game. So in a certain sense, it feels like it's trending down, which is unfortunate. I posted this on Twitter earlier this weekend. There's a stat. It's called air yards per attempt. So yards per attempt is just a simple, if I threw for a hundred yards on 10 throws, right? I went seven of 10 throwing for a hundred yards. That would be 10 yards per attempt, right? The amount of yards you get per attempt, the air yards per attempt

Starting point is 00:02:54 is a measurement of how basically far you're throwing the football downfield. And so in theory, like if you throw the ball at the line of scrimmage on a receiver's screen, the air yards per that attempt are going to be zero, right? If you throw the ball 20 yards downfield, it's a deep out or it's a deep drag route or I don't know, it's a quick little fade route downfield, whatever. 20 yards downfield and then you have a zero yard pass, your average air yards then becomes basically 10 yards. And so it's not that air yards per attempt is like this, this stat that necessarily indicates, Hey,

Starting point is 00:03:30 the quarterbacks will have the best air yards per attempt. The quarterbacks have the worst air yards per attempt are always the best and worst quarterbacks. No, that's not the case. Like there is scheme stuff. And you know, if you, if you look at like air force quarterbacks, like they might average more air yards, but I don't actually know this for fact, but like, I don't know, more air yards per attempt because they run the ball so much and then when they do throw, they're going to throw downfield

Starting point is 00:03:50 because the defense is creeping up or something. There's ways to be effective at both, but point being, you do want your air yards per attempt to not be like super low. You do want it to be a situation where you are attempting throws downfield because if you are attempting throws downfield because if you are attempting throws downfield consistently, it's stressing the defense in different ways, but also it's probably indicative that you're getting throws downfield in the intermediate to deep quadrants of the field to where you are able to have success. And so you look back at past KU quarterbacks like

Starting point is 00:04:20 Jason Bean last year, he was 10.9 area yards per attempt. Jason Bean the year before, 10.2. You look at Jalen Daniels last year, 10.1. Jalen Daniels the year before, 9.5. And I did this list of quarterbacks back to KU back to 2016. You even have guys like Ryan Willis. His area yards per attempt was 4.8. You have Montel Cozart in 2016. It was 4.2. Miles Kendrick in 2020 was 4.5. Jalen Daniels is a 17-year-old true freshman behind a cardboard box offensive line was 3.7. This season, Jalen Daniels is 3.3 air yards per attempt. So what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that KU was not throwing the ball very much downfield. I think what makes that crazier, though, you think of the Illinois game. You think of the Illinois game, and it was like too many attempts downfield, too many deep balls.

Starting point is 00:05:08 It was either receiver screen or it was an attempt downfield. And so if you even consider the fact that yeah, they had those deep balls in the Illinois game, that this number is that low. What does that tell you about the rest of the passes, right? If you took out those deep ball attempts against Illinois and I guess Lindenwood, then what is this number? Is it like 2.5? Is5 is it like two like that is just insane so it was the lowest number of any quarterback since at least 2016 I didn't go back any further than that ran out of characters on the tweet but this tells us that they're probably running too many screens which I think is probably something a lot of people would assume this tells us that they're not attacking the intermediate and the deep portions well enough and this probably also tells us that um Jalen Daniels is like some of it could be the play calling some of it could also be Jalen Daniels maybe isn't as confident to throw

Starting point is 00:05:54 the football downfield and he's taking the checkdowns and not wanting to risk it downfield because when he is he's getting intercepted so like there's a lot that kind of goes into that number but the bottom line is that is a bad place to be in. Overall, you look at KU's yards per pass attempt going to that more traditional number. KU's at 6.4 this year. They were 10 a season ago, 10.0. The year before that, they were 8.9. The year before that, they were 7.0 in 2021.

Starting point is 00:06:19 Currently, 6.4 yards per attempt passing, which Kansas is at this season, that's dead last in the Big 12. The distance between Kansas in last place versus Arizona State, who's in 11th place of the Big 12 teams in throwing yards per attempt, it's the same gap between Kansas to 11th place as 11th place Arizona State all the way to the best number in the conference, which is currently owned by UCF. So that's how big the gap is there of how poor Kansas passing offense has been. So that's obviously parts of it. There's more parts to passing offense.

Starting point is 00:06:52 What about interceptions? Well, we know there have been interception issues for KU. If we go by interceptions thrown among quarterbacks who have thrown passes this year in college football, Jalen Daniels is 308th in the country in interceptions thrown. Now, I don't know how many of those qualify, how many have thrown one pass or whatever, because backups play early in this year.

Starting point is 00:07:08 Put it this way, though. Only one guy nationally has thrown more interceptions than what Jalen Daniels has thrown. That's not a good place to be in either. Okay, what about if we go to like a stat like QBR, which is kind of this all-encompassing metric? Well, Jalen Daniels is 13th among 16 in the league for the big 12 he is 85th in the country and you look at previous years he's been like in the top 25 uh DJ Uyunga Lele has really struggled at Florida State and drawn a lot of ire Jalen Daniels right now is only 1.6 points better on

Starting point is 00:07:38 total QBR than DJU so I guess if you want to get into the good news, Jalen Daniels' best game by QBR was actually still this last game because of the first half he played. The second half, I would imagine if you divvied it out in halves, it was maybe the worst. But if you can figure out how to rekindle old Jalen, maybe old Jalen's gone. I don't know. Maybe this week is a good opportunity. I don't know how much of this stuff is mental. If it is, you think back to the New Era game that Jalen Daniels was a part of, played so well, and shouts that, starts the video, everything like that. You think about that game.

Starting point is 00:08:14 That was in Morgantown. That was at West Virginia. Maybe there are some good vibes to be had. Jalen Daniels going to Morgantown this week, feeling that same sort of feeling being in that stadium, I don't know. Maybe that is something that can lead to a positive boost and can make him better in league play. But obviously, now that it's happened back-to-back weeks,

Starting point is 00:08:38 now that it's happened two straight times, and again, it looked even worse the second half of the UNLV game than anything we saw in the previous six quarters, which still had some struggles. This is kind of becoming more of a needing to change or fix than needing to just stay course. And that is what is scary here as you try to figure this stuff out. So the hope is that it turns around. The hope is that we get old Jalen.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Again, I feel bad what's going on for him. And obviously, it's unfortunate for everybody around the program but yeah passing offense has not been good enough so far and can they figure out will be the big question the rest of the season especially since pretty much all the other aspects all the other areas have looked pretty good for KU so far this season I uh was looking at some of the pro football focus numbers as we're getting ready for the third segment of today's show and you can take a look on pro football focus at like a schedule view. And it shows you the, the team grades in each category.

Starting point is 00:09:31 And so they have them like color coded to make it easier. Like if it's if it's like a really good grade, like an 80 or a 90, it's like a blue or like a dark green teal. I guess you would say if it's in like the seventies, it's like a green, the higher 70 it gets, it becomes a darker green, getting to that more blue hue. If you get into the 50s and 60s, it starts to become a yellow hue. Then you start getting into the 40s, it starts to become an orange hue. Stuff

Starting point is 00:09:57 below that becomes a red hue. Point being, there are only two orange hues, two orange blocks on these pro football focus grades for any year. So there's passing grade, there's pass block grade, receiving, running, run defense, tackling, pass rush. There's a bunch of others that I didn't even get to. There are only two orange blocks among all these different categories among three games for KU in this grade. Both of them are the passing grades for KU. It's against Illinois and UNLV. So can you figure that out?

Starting point is 00:10:24 But the takeaway right now, based on the last two games and this last game, backing up what happened the game before, is that the passing offense is kind of in some trouble right now. Alright, let's continue on with our second and third takeaways from the game. This is Locked on Jayhawks. We are brought

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Starting point is 00:11:42 Continuing on with our three biggest takeaways. Thanks for making lockdown Jayay hawks your first listen every day don't forget to make locked on college football your second listen okay takeaway number two uh this is more positive one tommy dunn is an all big 12 level defensive tackle he is making that jump into in being that type of player you know we talked about this in the offseason that we were higher on that interior the defensive tackle unit than you might think on paper and we figured okay there's going to be a good rotation guys can somebody take that jump to being the next guy and I think the favorite for it through the offseason was maybe a guy like DJ Withers maybe even through Caleb Taylor's name around and Tommy Dunn has kind

Starting point is 00:12:19 of taken that mantle I think so far he was a game wrecker against UNLV he had an awesome game for KU for really much of the game uh really played well working with the linebackers like there were a lot of run plays that got plugged up whereas like Tommy Dunn and Cornell Wheeler Tommy Dunn and J.B. Brown kind of combining on this hit so overall through three games obviously as a defense tackle interior guy you're not going to rack up like huge stats like a lot of times your job is to take up a blocker or two to open up the hole stats. Like a lot of times your job is to take up a blocker or two to open up the hole for the linebacker to make the tackle for this other guy to make the tackle. So you're never going to be somebody who gets, you know, 50 tackles

Starting point is 00:12:53 in a season. At least you wouldn't think so unless you're pretty darn special, but nine tackles through three games. So about three per game, which is all things considered pretty good two TFLs and half a sack so far far so if you extrapolate that over the course of um a four or a 12 game season for ku then you're looking at what 36 tackles uh you're looking at eight tackles for loss and you're looking at two sacks that would be really good defensive tackle numbers like by comparison uh daniel wise his sophomore season which I think he was still all big 12 because that would have been 2016 when I think Dorrance Armstrong had a big year I don't remember uh 38 tackles 10 TFLs three sacks and that's when he was playing many more snaps than Tommy Dunn is who's

Starting point is 00:13:35 rotating out with other guys so I think that's kind of what you're looking at here that he's taking that step up some of its statistics some of it is not. He already has more sacks. He already has only four less tackles than he made last season, so taking that step up. He has a 73 pro football focus grade, including a 70 in terms of pass rush and what he's been able to provide there. And he's already up to 98 snaps on the season,

Starting point is 00:13:59 so he's playing a lot more than in years past. So 33 snaps per game. That was 42 snaps on Friday night which that is where the real increase is coming and last season he averaged 22 snaps per game so clearly the coaching staff is giving him more trust he's earned it because the playing is been really good and I think what's even crazier like according to pro football focus he's missed four tackles so far this season which is one of the higher numbers on the team he only has a 29 tackling grade on pro football focus now I do think some of those for defensive linemen for defense tackles specifically can be overblown on the the

Starting point is 00:14:34 tackling grade on pff because a lot of them was oh I'm getting blocked by this guy but I really opened up the lane for somebody else to make tackle and now I'm going to stick my arm out there and try to grab the you know running back and I missed the tackle I guess so I don't know if you get dinged for that much but you can view that as a positive because overall Tommy Dunn's had a good season and has a good PFF grade even despite that and say okay if he just starts you know making let's say he made one extra of those tackles two extras of those tackles right now all of a sudden you're taking an even bigger leap on plays that seem to be kind of doable so I've been really impressed with Tommy Dunn and I definitely feel like he is kind of making that leap to being a possible you know all big 12 honorable mention all big 12 second team we'll see if he can make an

Starting point is 00:15:12 even bigger jump and and be that kind of superstar defense tackle for KU third and final takeaway here Kansas is not a good turnover or discipline team you know this was something where Kansas wasn't a great turnover team last year they were were a bad team at avoiding penalties. And that kind of goes back to 2022 as well. Now, 2021, the first year of the light bulb era, they did a great job at avoiding penalties. But this year too, like early on, there haven't been great returns for KU. They had nine penalties for 90 yards in the loss to UNLV. So you look at the two games they played against UNLV, the one bowl game, the one this year, that's basically 300 yards of penalty yards in two games. Currently, Kansas ranks 76th in the country in penalty yards per game.

Starting point is 00:15:55 Last season, Kansas was 13th of 14 teams in the Big 12 in penalty yards per game. So you're doing a bad job of avoiding these penalties. Then right now, Kansas is negative in turnovers. You are minus five over the last two games and you're minus four on the season with those turnovers. So last year, Kansas was right around even, which I mean, if at this point you said Kansas can finish even this year, that would mean you'd be plus four over the final nine games. I would take that for sure. The problem here is that, you know, if you're giving away turnovers, like they're lollipops on interceptions, it's going to be hard to kind of keep that even at the other end, but

Starting point is 00:16:38 Kansas hasn't really been forcing turnovers and really the best chance they had to get one against UNLV, they couldn't jump on the football. And the thing is like you hear the term fumble luck all the time. And I talk about it too. Cause like typically teams recover about 50% of the fumbles that are out there. Are there ways you could maybe consistently be, you know, 55, 60% as a program, if you work on certain things or, you know, if you typically have good athletes or around the football,

Starting point is 00:17:04 have a lot of good team tackling. Yeah. Those numbers are probably going to go up because you're going to have more guys around or, you know, if you typically have good athletes or around the football, have a lot of good team tackling. Yeah, those numbers are probably going to go up because you're going to have more guys around there. But KU had plenty of guys around the football against UNLV and just could not pick up the football. And yes, dive on the football. That would be great. But like, I think there were three or four attempts to pick up the football for KU and all but one of them were guys trying to dive on the football and it still didn't work. So like there is a little bit of bad luck. But the problem is you go back to last year, Kansas was one of the top two teams in the conference enforcing fumbles but they were in the bottom half of the league and recovering fumbles so that has kind of carried

Starting point is 00:17:31 over and so when you look at it if you're going to be you know not disciplined from the standpoint of getting a lot of penalties and you're going to be bad in the turnover game that makes it tough to overcome and and it's one thing if you're Georgia and you're doing that thing, where you just are overwhelmingly talented than the other team. Kansas has a lot of talent on the roster. A lot of games, I think all these games so far this season, they've been the more talented team. But the margin of how much more talented they've been or are,

Starting point is 00:18:01 I think we're seeing right now, they've lost these close games. It's not a huge amount. And so if you're Kansas, you still do have to play fundamentally solid football. And we're not seeing that right now. And my worry is that based on some of the numbers last year, in addition to what we've seen earlier this year, that those are just going to be problems all season long for KU.

Starting point is 00:18:18 All right, let's finish up. Top PFF performers, bottom PFF performers for KU against UNLV. This episode is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. You've heard us talk a lot about FanDuel where you'll be able to probably get boosts for a bunch of the games coming up this weekend with FanDuel or maybe some Monday night football action tonight. Well, with America's number one sportsbook, we have something a little bit different for you as well.

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Starting point is 00:18:59 account and a current form of payment, and you can cancel anytime. That's FanDuel Sportsbook, official sportsbook partner of the Locked On Podcast Network. Finishing things up on this episode of the show with our top and bottom PFF performers for the KU UNLV game, we're going to get into a first quarter report on Tuesday's episode where stock's up, stock's down. Plan on having some more shows later throughout the week.

Starting point is 00:19:26 Maybe we'll have a conversation about the quarterback specifically and get into a preview as well for the West Virginia game, maybe some basketball content too. All right, so the top PFF performers on the offensive side of the football. Bryce Foster had a 79.7 grade. So we talked about – I don't even know what to think about this, man, because we talked about this earlier this week that Bryce Foster needed to have a big game for KU to win the game. Bryce Foster had the best game for the KU offense and

Starting point is 00:19:54 they lost the game. And we kind of said, this is part of that. Like, this is not saying that if Bryce Foster has a good game, they're guaranteed to win the game. It's that if Bryce Foster has a good game, it severely increases their chances and, and you know would be at a position of need to avoid losing the game and I think in a real way it contributed to a lot of winning again there's only so much you can do though if your quarterback is going one for ten during a stretch in the second half and has two interceptions one that leads to a possible 10-point swing at the end of the first half, then your offensive coordinator is not, I don't know, finding things in tune, right? I mean, the center, the left tackle, Devin Neal, they could have all had the best games in the world,

Starting point is 00:20:35 and it probably still wouldn't have mattered. But nonetheless, that was good to see. Bryce Foster has been good so far. Trevor Cardell, I thought he played a good game. 76 PFF grade. He had a couple of nice catches. One was a bit of a high throw that he was open for, made a good catch. The other one, he was getting kind of hit from behind and held onto it. Michael Ford, 68 grade. Devin Neal, a 67. And then Lawrence Arnold was a 67 as far as the top five there. But not nearly as many highly rated offensive guys. On the bottom five for the offensive side of the football, Jalen Daniels was the bottom number at a 44.6. They don't know that that would be surprising.

Starting point is 00:21:13 The second to last was Bryce Cabledew at a 45. And I think in general, the tackles struggled a bit in this game. I thought Logan Brown probably had a better first half, but Logan Brown was penalized twice. Bryce Cable was penalized once. You get three penalties from your two tackles. Brown wasn't in the bottom five, but Cable was. That certainly didn't help with Jalen Daniels either.

Starting point is 00:21:36 I do think once they became more predictable in the second half with what they were doing, you probably, as defensive ends, start kind of pinning your ears back and getting excited because you're going, oh, they're going to run it on first down, and then, like, here comes the pass, whatever. Leighton Cure was bottom five. He only had three snaps, though.

Starting point is 00:21:51 Quentin Skinner was bottom five at 49.5. And then you had Tavita Noah, who was in for just five snaps in the bottom five as well. Only really other things of note, of interest, was kind of the snap counts here. Like, Savion Morrison had 10 snaps, but just felt like they were like, eh, we're not really going to get him in the football.

Starting point is 00:22:10 Doug Emelian, Torrey Laughlin, only one in three snap. Trevor Wilson, who I thought was going to have a bigger role in this team, only five snaps in the game for KU. What about on the defensive side of the football for the Jayhawks? Top PFF performers, Mello Dotson, 77.3. Mello Dotson has been KU's best corner so far this season. Not that Kobe Bryant's been bad. Kobe Bryant's been fine.

Starting point is 00:22:31 I do think there were a couple times that, you know, maybe he got beat on the outside in this game, the UNLV, and they just didn't come through with the completion. And we'll get to the bottom five PFF performers. He was actually on there. I don't think he was necessarily that bad. But it's less about Kobe. It's more about i think mellow has just raised to another level he's been really good so far this season for ku taiwan barry hill 73 pff grade that was good to

Starting point is 00:22:54 see barry hill's had some struggles in the past played 30 snaps rotated in he was good in this game uh more power to him he ended up with an 80 tackling grade he had a 73 overall grade Jeremy Robinson good grade for him too 73 overall grade and if he would have just came up with that one he had one missed tackle in the game and it was that one unfortunate play at the end he would have had pretty uh stellarly perfect game you could have asked for and what he did but overall he was good Jamie Brown up there at a 72 and then how how about this one? Blake Harold, again, kind of rotating in the young redshirt freshman, only 11 snaps, but a 71 at PFF grade. I also will mention this guy right on the outskirts, Alex Reich, the kind of hawk who played more in this game, 17 snaps because Jason Gilliam going through an injury. And Reich was sixth on PFF

Starting point is 00:23:43 grade at a 69 there. And overall, KU had, what is this? 11, 12, 12 players who were rated a 65 or higher. That's good stuff because the 65 is basically, you know, average like even 60 is kind of average, but 65 is like dead average. So to even have 12 and then have five guys who are 70 above, which is like a good grade speaks well to what the defense kind of did overall. But on the bottom five, you have DJ Warner, only five snaps, 43 PFF grade. Kobe Bryant was there at a 49 PFF grade.

Starting point is 00:24:13 Devin Dye at a 50, DJ Withers at a 57, and then Ron McGee in just six snaps had a 59 for KU. They overall missed 12 tackles, which is more than they missed in the first two games combined. So certainly some skill position speed hurt KU a little overall missed 12 tackles, which is more than they missed in the first two games combined. So certainly some skill position speed hurt KU a little bit more in this game. But honestly, a majority of those missed tackles, it felt like was on the quarterback who was a big power runner and had more speed than I thought he did, but still, you know, wasn't as fast as like Jacob DeJesus or something like that. So some interesting numbers there to say the least.

Starting point is 00:24:44 We'll see how that impacts, you know, who's getting playing time as season goes on this week and moving forward for KU. That'll do it for this episode of the show. You can find our show locked on Jayhawks, anywhere you get your podcasts, including our YouTube page. We'll see you next time with LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Three Takeaways from Kansas Jayhawks Loss to UNLV: Passing Struggles, Tommy Dunn Breakout & More

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