Kansas football: Where do the Jayhawks go after blowout loss to Baylor

After another blowout loss to Baylor, the Kansas football team finds itself in a familiar place–picking up the pieces to what seemed like a promising opportunity to now trying to find out what all went wrong.

The Jayhawks came into the game against the Bears as 17 point underdogs, a relatively generous number considering Kansas’ average points per loss against Baylor in the last 11 matchups have been a whopping 36 points. If it weren’t for a one-point victory for Baylor in 2011, it would have been even worse.

This game wouldn’t be much different as the Jayhawks would fall to the Bears 45-7, marking the tenth time they’ve lost by three touchdowns or more to Baylor in the last twelve years.

What went wrong

The first half wasn’t great for the Jayhawks, but they hung around enough to keep the score 14-7 with a chance to tie it up coming out of halftime. This is where things seemingly fell apart for Kansas.

The momentum appeared to be on their side, but the offense immediately struggled coming out of halftime and went three and out twice in a matter of minutes. Baylor touchdowns would follow up both three and outs. And suddenly, what seemed like a close game, would be 28-7 and just about out of reach for the Jayhawks.

It wasn’t a day where only the defense struggled; it was a day the offense struggled just as much. In Week 1, the Jayhawks relied on their defense to beat South Dakota, holding them to only 263 yards of offense. In Week 2, the Jayhawks offense impressed against Coastal Carolina, putting up 412 yards of total offense but only managing 22 points.

It was the hope that against Baylor, both the offense and defense would come together, and Kansas could put together a complete game. Unfortunately, it would be the opposite that would occur.

Baylor would go on to average 8.3 yards per play and hold Kansas to just 3.3 yards per play and a disappointing 166 yards of total offense. These numbers alone are a recipe for disaster.

After the game, head coach Lance Leipold said, “We have to own it.” And he added that he was highly disappointed in their performance.

Where do the Jayhawks go from here

Not all is lost for the Jayhawks, though. It’s easy to forget the situation that new head coach Lance Leipold and his staff walked into. They’ve only had fall camp to legitimately prepare for the season, which is a handful of spring practices and meetings with coaches short of the typical preparation.

Leipold doesn’t believe all the blame is on the players, and he takes a lot of the responsibility himself.

"I told them that I need to do a better job for them, and we all do. So if we all take ownership of it, I think we’ll continue to move in a direction we want to be. – head coach, Lance Leipold"

It’s not just Leipold that knows the team has work to do; even the players understand the work that needs to be put in.

"Of course we’re frustrated, but we’re just ready to go back to work, put our hard hats back on and continue to chop that wood. – junior safety, Kenny Logan Jr."

In what seemed like a huge step back from previous weeks, the Jayhawks will look forward and work on preparing for the rest of the season. Their next opponent is against Duke, a team that is beatable but showed out last week with a solid victory over Northwestern 30-23.

If Kansas looks to pull off the upset on the road, they’ll need to be offensively and defensively sound. And they’ll need to limit the silly mistakes, putting themselves in a position to be in the game late.