Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - What's a realistic level of improvement for the Kansas Jayhawks' Defense?

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

How much can the Kansas Jayhawks' defense improve from last season to this under Brian Borland and Lance Leipold? And if there is massive improvement, what's the win total we can correlate with that improvement.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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we take a look at the defense. How much can they improve and how many wins could that be for KU football? I'm Derek Johnson. This is Locked on Jayhawks. You can also hear me on Rock Chalk Sports Talk Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 on KLWN. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcasts. On today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we're going to take a deep dive into the defense.

How much better can they get after giving up over 40 points per game last season? And will that relate to an increase in wins? Will that even possibly relate to winning maybe four games, the most that they've had since the Mark Mangino days Kansas surrendered 42 points per game a season ago as you would imagine that was last in the big 12 that was also last in college football Georgia if they gave up four times more points of Georgia played because I'm trying to think they already played what the SC title game two playoff games they played 15 games if Georgia played 60 because I'm trying to think, they already played what? The SC title game, two playoff games. They played 15 games.

If Georgia played 60 games and you still averaged it out over 15 games, they would still be giving up less points per game than what Kansas did last year, which is not just a thing about Kansas. It also speaks to the freaky nature of how good Georgia defense was last season. But Kansas was also last among power. Five schools in points allowed per game. Duke was the next lowest at 39.8 points per game. So even then, it's a couple points better than what Kansas was.

And that next lowest Big 12 team was TCU, who was over a touchdown better by points allowed per game. 34.9 points for the TCU defense. Kansas at 42.2. The only team that was worse than Kansas in the entirety of FBS was Massachusetts, who's had one of the worst defenses over the last two or three years in college football. They give up 43.1 points per game. And what went into that defense being so bad for KU, the rushing defense was just a sieve. I mean, it was really problematic for the Jayhawks on that end of

things. They give up over six yards per carry. That too was one of the lowest marks in the country. The only teams that were lower were Akron and Arkansas State. They were by far the lowest among Big 12 schools. They were by far the lowest among Power 5 schools, as you would imagine for both of those numbers. So clearly, rush defense has to get better additionally they weren't great at forcing turnovers now they were a little better than some of those other ranks at forcing turnovers but they also didn't have the the best pass rush in the world they had one good pass rusher with Kyron Johnson but they didn't have a lot of other guys they didn't have a lot of guys creating disruption again really outside Kyron Johnson the linebacker unit was one of the worst in the entirety of college football,

and the secondary, while he had some nice pieces, like Kenny Logan was great a season ago, and you had some good moments from some of the young players like OJ Burrows and Jacoby Bryant. At the end of the day, you played like three, four, five freshmen in that back end that obviously that's going to get exposed at certain times. There's going to be inconsistencies. So the defense struggled. That's not new. Everybody knows it.

How much better can they get? Phil Steele Magazine had them as the most improved defense from last year to this year. Now, obviously that number isn't just about, you know, how much better you're going to be. It also is you kind of get to sandbag it a little bit when you give up as many points as Kansas did last season to where Kansas could, like, for instance, that TCU number of them giving up like 35 points per game,

if Kansas improves to what TCU was doing a season ago, they would be one of the most improved defenses in the country. And they would still be one of the worst defenses in the Big 12 and in the entire country by being, you know, TCU was bottom 10, essentially, just outside of it in the country in points allowed per game last season. kind of a tough question to get to of how good can this Kansas defense get to this season and how much will it lead to winning but I think if you look back at some previous years for Kansas I think you would find that you know if they get to that number of where TCU was then maybe that does put them in the running to win because again the goal here three wins gets you the over on the Vegas over-under win total. It would be improvement from last year.

Three is a positive. Four is a success, right? So those are the numbers you're looking for. Can improving by a touchdown be enough to get there? I think it can. Now, as far as how they are going to get there, let's get to that first. How do you improve by a touchdown? Or maybe even more?

I mean, there have been seasons, like Texas Tech a few years ago, improved by like 13 points per game defensively. That's kind of the ceiling, but that took Texas Tech going from not just being a better defense, but also having just incredible turnover luck. Maybe that turnover luck stuff can happen, but it's not something you want to bank on going into a season. So realistically to me, the most that I would look at Kansas improving somewhere between seven to 10 points. The first part of it is the red zone defense. Kansas allowed touchdowns on over 80% of drives that reached the red zone. Next lowest in the big 12 or next highest, I guess, was in the

low seventies, which was TCU. Texas Tech was in eighth at 66 percent, but the distance between Texas Tech in eighth and second place in the Big 12 in percentage of touchdowns that were converted in the red zone on the defense was closer than the gap between them and Kansas. So clearly there's a big number that you can shave off just by being better and maybe getting a little more luck in the red zone. could shave off a few points here or there Kansas also allowed a lot of red zone trips so if you do a better job of not just the bending not breaking but not bending at all and maybe there's five less trips to the red zone against you this year than the near 60 you gave up a season ago maybe that's shaving off a few more points. And then how the defense just gets better overall.

You bring a lot back on the defensive line. You have a bunch of fifth-year players on the defensive line. You bring in Lonnie Phelps, where even though you did lose Kyron Johnson, your best pass rusher, your best front seven player on the defensive side of the ball from a year ago, you at least bring in Lonnie Phelps, a transfer who I don't think it's crazy to expect that he could put up similar production, if not maybe even better, than what Kyron Johnson did.

Like, Kyron Johnson, better athlete, more explosive player. Lonnie Phelps, I think, is a more refined pass rusher in that game. So you should have improvement on the defensive line. You look to the linebacker core. You bring in a host of transfers, whether it's Lorenzo McCaskill, Eric Gileard, Craig Young, who's kind of that linebacker safety hybrid going to play the hawk role. That's a big improvement that you had in the linebacker position. Again, one of the positions that was maybe the worst in the entire country, or at least it was the worst in the Big 12 a season ago.

You completely overhauled that position. That position, I don't think, is now the worst in the Big 12. I mean, it's tough, but at the very least, you are now Big 12 quality in that position. So that is a huge improvement that you had from last year to this year. Plus, you bring guys back. You have other guys who have kind of broken out at that position, or maybe their bodies have gotten more ready for Big 12 and Division I Power 5 football. Then you look at the secondary.

Your best player on that end Kenny Logan is back you improved the other safety spot with bringing in the transfer Marvin Grant you have other young guys like I mentioned with Jacoby Bryant OJ Burroughs shot Dabney all guys who were youngsters a season ago Romello Dotson who are heading into another season after having all that experience so the secondary shouldn't be worse. It should be at least just the same, if not better than it was a season ago. So you look down the list and you just look at it positionally. There's more depth as well. So you can cover more injuries. There's no reason the defense shouldn't be better in all those areas. If you get a little bit better

turnover luck, you get a little bit better red zone luck as well as just just playing better defense that should be enough to improve this defense by around a touchdown per game in a moment I want to go over why if they can't improve it by a touchdown per game maybe seven to ten points why that could lead to three four maybe even five wins for KU football you're hanging out with some friends and putting back a few drinks. A few becomes a few too many. As the evening comes to an end and people start to head out, you think of calling for a ride. Nah, you live nearby. You can make it home okay. It's no big deal. What are the odds you'll get pulled over anyway? And even so, what's the worst that could happen? Your insurance goes up, you lose your license, you lose your job, you total your car, you kill someone. Everyone

knows about the risks of driving drunk. The results are tragic and often deadly. However, that still doesn't stop everyone from getting behind the wheel while under the influence. That's why police officers are out there right now looking for impaired drivers on our roads to save lives. So if you think you're okay to drive after a few drinks, think again. Play it safe and plan ahead to get a ride. It only takes one mistake to change your life or someone else's forever drive sober or get pulled over coming up we will get to our number seven question that we're excited to get answered once the KU football season starts how does Kenny Logan raise things to another level but furthering this conversation about the defense like what is the number they

have to get to? If we just look at the comparison of what TCU did last year, a TCU team, as I mentioned, had a very, very bad defense. They got 35 points per game. That was next to last in the Big 12 outside of Kansas, and it was also one of the bottom 15 marks in the entire country. Well, that team still won five games. They still won three big 12 games, five and seven, three and six overall. And that even included dealing with a head coaching change. But they scored 29 points per game. They had an offense that was able to be that explosive. I think that that might be a little too far from, as we talked about earlier on Locked on Jayhawks,

from what I'm expecting from the offense. So can KU get a little bit lower? But if KU averages 25 points per game and gives up 35, as opposed to the 28-29 TCU is getting offensively, maybe instead of five wins like TCU got, it's three or four. And again, that would be deemed either a mildly successful or very successful season. You could look back at 2018, Kansas won three games. We've talked about this before. Kansas won three, but they probably could have won four, five, or six. That team only give up 30 points per game. Can you get down that much? Can you get down 12 points per game? That would be pretty aspirational if you could do so. The one thing that is going their favor, though,

as they try to do that, you know, outside of the improvements that we kind of talked about earlier in this episode if they're going to be a run first team and they talk about being multiple changing up the tempo things like that I believe all that to be true but if they are going to be a run first team who more often than not we see playing more possession football think the Oklahoma game they had like that nine and a half minute drive where they can kind of bleed out the clock team, who more often than not, we see playing more possession football. Think the Oklahoma game, they had like that nine and a half minute drive where they can kind of bleed out the clock and everything. Obviously, if there's less possessions, there's less plays, there's less time your defense is on the field, you're going to just give up less points per game. It doesn't guarantee that

your defense is all of a sudden going to be much better because efficiency wise, it could still be just as bad. If you give up four touchdowns on four drives and they score a touchdown on a hundred percent of their drives, it doesn't make it much better than if you gave up 42 points per game where they scored six of six, like either way, it's still, they're having success on a hundred percent of the drives. But into this conversation, I guess it matters a little bit there. How about the 2019 team though? This is very interesting to me. That team gave up 36 points per game. They scored 23 and a half. They won three games, and they very easily could have won four, five, or six. Should have beat Coastal Carolina very easily. Could have beat Texas. Could have beat West Virginia. So if that

team did it with giving up 36, now part of the formula there is that the number got ballooned up because they were either really competitive or in the games that they were not, they got blown out, and so the number ballooned up. And you want this team to be very competitive each and every week because that would show signs of progress. So the number has to be lower than that, but the point is if you can improve by at least the touchdown, that puts them in the running to be a three or four win team. If you can get to the

point where you are one of those teams that, you know, you have a 10 point improvement in terms of what you're giving up and the offense improves to what you expect. So what we talked about earlier this week, you average 24, 25 points per game. You give up 32 points per game. That's probably a 4-5 win team. It just is. And then this all ties back in together with the Jalen Daniels stuff.

If Jalen Daniels is that good of a quarterback that we think, and you combine it with a much improved defense, which seems like a realistic possibility, given all the improvements that you've had on that side of the ball and just the pure notion of, hey, the coaches took over so late in the game last season, the defense that KU was running out there was a lot more basic than I'm sure what they want to do. KU's defense, I think the game plan to begin with is to be a little bit more vanilla and just try to master what you do well and try to just perfect the simple things, the fundamentals, the little parts of that, and just kind of have an identity of what you want to do defensively

to where it's, hey, we're just doing this each and every week. And we just have to tweak it based on who we're playing. We adjust this or that, as opposed to just being this defense that's doing a little bit of everything and we don't really know what's going to happen. So it is from that standpoint, not going to be totally different, but there still is intricacies, even if you are more vanilla in that way, even if you are more basic in that way, that I'm sure they couldn't get to all of them last year, whether it's different pass rush designs, whether it's different coverages or mixing guys up with defensive linemen dropping back and linebackers rushing to try to confuse the offense that maybe you're not going to do each and every play,

but you're going to do sometimes. That's part of this defense now, too, that we haven't really talked about here. Brian Borland in year two getting the defense revved up and ready to go from that standpoint and guys understanding their role, not just the extended playbook, but having a better understanding of, hey, on this play, I have this guy up top helping me out if this route is thrown. So I need to shade to this side of the field or shade to this route. Those little

things can help a lot. And that's why I do expect a big difference from the defense this season. The difference of how much is really going to be the ultimate goal. But as we know, the ultimate, I guess, kind of equalizer and thing that can change everything for positive for KU is if they have a season like 2018 where they just were so turnover positive over the course of that season where you know you're forcing a billion turnovers against Rutgers and you're one of the top two or three teams in the entire country in turnover margin if this defense is forcing turnovers like crazy that's how you can have a monumental swing in the season, but at the very least, they've shown enough that they should have solid improvement, and if they have that solid improvement to get back in line with other Big 12 teams up by a touchdown or whatever it is,

there's no reason to expect this team can't win three, four, maybe dare I even say five games, especially if the offense comes along with it. But if one side of the ball, offense or defense, doesn't improve to what we've been talking about, that 24, 25 point per game range offensively, that 35 or lower point range defensively, you might be looking at a one or two win season. BetOnline.net is the fastest and easiest way to check in on all your betting needs. Find all your favorite sports and events at the number one online source

for odds, lines, and games. Find reviews and news of every league, including Major League Baseball, NFL, NBA, NHL, combat sports, esports, and even golf. BetOnline continues to be the top online resource for all your sports wagering information from live in-game betting, scores, and podcasts. They have you covered. Head to BetOnline today or use your mobile device to learn more about the action happening today. I want to get a little future in there on the Chiefs. You're getting slightly better odds than you have the past couple seasons.

Over-under for the Chiefs right now is 10.5, which, man, I get it. The division's really tough, and you have, like, the hardest schedule in the world because you play everyone in the division twice. You play the NFC West, which is probably the best division out of the NFC side of things you have the Buccaneers in that extra game and then you have all the division winners with the likes of the Bills and the Bengals the schedule is brutal for the Chiefs and you lose Tyreek Hill and all this stuff but you still have the floor of having Patrick Mahomes like how often do you see hey we have the best quarterback in the NFL,

and we went 9-7, we went 10-7 now, right? So can they get to 11-6? I think they can. I think 11-6, 12-5 is possible. I think I like the Chiefs on the over there. Maybe that's just me being a homer, maybe being a little too optimistic, but I think that's a good bet. Bet online where the game starts. We continue on with our top 10 questions headed into the KU football season that we're excited to get answered.

We had numbers 10 through 8 on our earlier podcast this week here on Locked on Jayhawks. Let's get into number 7. How does Kenny Logan raise things to another level? He was already great last season. His pro football focus grade was great. He was already great last season. His pro football focus grade was great. He was top five safety in the Big 12 and he's back for another year. Coverage grade was in the 80s, which was by far the best coverage grade for KU defensive backs or really any defensive player on KU a season ago. He's obviously good at coming up and making a tackle and being that last line of defense for you there. And he had a great season in kick return he had the long kick return against

South Dakota State he had the long kick return for a touchdown I believe it was against West Virginia he was an all-big 12 player and headed into this season because of his past performance he is an all-big 12 first teamer which Oklahoma has one All-Big 12 first-teamer, the same amount as Kansas, and Oklahoma's is a punter. So that'll show you how good Kenny Logan is. I think on our Locked On Big 12 podcast, they've been releasing their top players in the Big 12, and Kenny Logan came in at No. 7 in terms of players in the Big 12. Clearly, this dude has already accomplished a lot

and is already a fantastic individual player for Kansas. How do you take that to the next level? Because even as good as he was last season, it's not like it turned into a bunch of wins for Kansas. Now you also look at the leadership aspect and that could be one way that you can improve your game by raising the level of others, but that's also never been a question of Kenny Logan like he's always been known as being a great leader for the team both on the field and off the field and he was a big reason why a lot of guys stuck together and started to buy in and commit to this process with the new coaching staff Lance Leipold there because he bought in and was one of the first guys to meet with the staff.

And there were other players as well, but that really championed the idea of them being accountable and responsible and being a part of this program. So he has all that down. I guess the next thing that you would look at is, can you go from being an all-conference player to making the jump to All-American? Can Kenny Logan pop up on a second or third team All-American list?

That would be taking your game to the next level. As far as what that would include, it's just continuing to do what you've already done, but maybe just do it a little bit more consistently. And maybe force a few extra turnovers. He was good at forcing fumbles and stuff like that. Maybe get a few extra interceptions. Maybe get a pick six that really impacts the game and sways the game one way or another. And then finding a way, going back to the idea of lifting up the others around you.

Like I said, I think he is a good leader in everything. Can you find ways to be so impactful that it either causes the quarterback to constantly not throw to your side to where it's making offenses more predictable? Or can you do something on the field that basically is going to make the young corners or the transfers that you have around you more comfortable in the defense to where you get them lined up in the right spot or where you make sure to communicate everything that's going on with the defense?

Basically being the guy that is setting up the rest of the defense and the rest of the secondary to have even more success and to raise their game by a little bit those are all the keys for Kenny Logan continuing to to add even more to an already really good game because he was already so good but if he can find that next year if he can go from being an all-conference player to an all-american if he can go from being a player that impacts the game for KU defensively to one that impacts others on the defense for KU as well that's how you improve the defense from what we're talking about earlier from giving up 42 points per game to giving up low 30s from being a team that might only have the defense of a 0-1 or 2-win team

to having the defense of a team that can win 3, 4, or 5 games, he's going to be as pivotal and can orchestrate that as much as anyone individually on the defense. He might just be the very best player on KU this season. Certainly, he comes into the season as KU's best player on the defensive side of the ball. If you have anything you'd like for the show to talk about or want to follow along on the action,

you can reach out at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter. And don't forget to subscribe to the latest 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. See you on Rock Chalk Sports Talk later today on KLWN. Adios.