Kansas football: Miles Kendrick isn’t cutting it for the Jayhawks on offense

We’ve seen three different options at quarterback this season, and after a significant portion of time on the field, Miles Kendrick isn’t the starter Kansas football needs going forward.

The Kansas football quarterback situation didn’t improve last Saturday, and things aren’t looking up in the future. Last week Miles Kendrick started for the Jayhawks in Morgantown. His results were more than disappointing, which is upsetting with how much athleticism he has at his disposal.

On offense, the Jayhawks struggle to protect the pocket and often fail to see success coming due to it. Kendrick made a series of poor passes last Saturday, some resulting in disastrous turnovers and wasted opportunities that Kansas desperately needed.

It seemed almost criminal how many opportunities our defense gave us to turn around and put some points on the board. Kendrick seemed uneasy when airing out the ball. This was a shame for talented receivers Andrew Parchment and Stephon Robinson, who had decent showings on Saturday. Multiple questionable throws upended any chance of getting us into Mountaineer territory, and kept us out of the end zone for nearly the entire game.

It’s not to say our rushing game hasn’t had it’s share of challenges, mostly stemming from the offensive line. Regardless, we need someone who can make tolerable decisions out of the pocket. It’s the only way I see our offense improving, without it we will overuse our rush attack that has been seen generously by three Big 12 opponents already. With the recent departure of Pooka Williams, this advantage will become smaller. We can’t afford the same inconsistent performance on offense if we expect to compete going forward.

Thomas MacVittie should be in the conversation for starting against Kansas State this coming Saturday. The Wildcats are without their senior quarterback Skylar Thompson, which may limit their offensive strength. MacVittie has seen a brief amount of time this season, starting against Coastal Carolina. However, I don’t know how much we should trust his decisions either based on a very poor performance in Week 1.

This does raise the question to how he has been adapting since the opening loss. I’m hoping he has taken advantage of his observations from the sidelines and made some improvements. He has a strong arm and I think he deserves another shot at leading this offense, especially with how bad of a start Kansas football has been off too this season.

This is all in speculation however, we haven’t heard any news about changes at quarterback and I’d doubt we’d hear anything until later in the week, if at all. Daniels and MacVittie have also been dealing with injuries; however, both should be available this week.

It should be expected that a change will come at quarterback against Kansas State next week, but if not I would be rather concerned for our offense walking into Manhattan. If the same results have persisted with Kendrick, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t look at our options. We have yet to see any showings from junior Miles Fallin or freshman Jordan Medley. Hopefully this week in practice, there will be a lot of time spent finding someone who is very comfortable with our offense, enough to hold their own under pressure.

A change at quarterback isn’t going to likely work any miracles for this offense. It can only mitigate this issues at hand and help us compete. If we can find ways to actively stay in contention during the game, I think it would have our guys ecstatic. The decision should be carefully made by coaches Les Miles and Brent Dearmon. We will need to see some definite promise if we expect to stay in it with No. 20 Kansas State.