What KU Jayhawks’ Lance Leipold said to K-State’s Chris Klieman after team’s late hit
When Kansas Jayhawks football coach Lance Leipold made his way across the field to K-State coach Chris Klieman following KU’s 35-10 loss Saturday, he knew there was something he had to address.
KU linebacker Gavin Potter, in the fourth quarter, drilled K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson when Thompson was two steps out of bounds for a personal-foul penalty.
Leipold said he and linebackers coach Chris Simpson spoke to Potter about the incident. But he also wanted to say something to Klieman as well, relaying to reporters afterward that he told the K-State coach “that’s not the way we’re gonna play.”
“I think he knows that’s not the way we coach it,” Leipold said of Klieman. “So, I think that’s frustration. I think it’s a lot of things, but we’ve got to be better than that. I have to do a better job than that.”
The moment was a small reflection of where things went wrong for KU in Saturday’s Sunflower Showdown.
All season, Leipold had emphasized playing with discipline and the right amount of fight. Against K-State on a sunny afternoon at Booth Memorial Stadium, however, the Jayhawks seemed to get things flipped at the most inopportune of times.
Take the first quarter. KU was hanging in while trailing 7-3 when Thompson delivered a deep pass to receiver Malik Knowles for a 68-yard touchdown. KU cornerback Duece Mayberry had him step-for-step for awhile ... before Knowles broke away late to pull it in.
“It’s almost like he pulled off the throttle a little bit,” Leipold said of Mayberry, “and the ball is still being thrown.”
There were other instances where KU defensively — for whatever reason — played passively.
On one K-State screen pass in the first half, KU cornerback Cam’Rom Dabney seemed to have Knowles in his sights for a loss but was unsure of himself. He stopped running toward the receiver, which allowed a K-State player to get in his way for a block as Knowles gained 15 on what could have been a dead play.
“It’s not a matter of willing or wanting,” Leipold said. “It’s a matter of confidence to go make it happen.”
A multitude of KU defensive issues, meanwhile, appeared on K-State’s first play of the second half. Deuce Vaughn took the carry, and KU followed with a comedy of bad angles, lack of physicality and poor effort from the backside as Vaughn weaved his way 80 yards for a put-the-game-away score.
KU’s probably lucky the final score didn’t look worse. The Wildcats averaged 10 yards per play entering the fourth quarter, and their final tally of 8.8 per play was the most they’d had in a conference game since 2012.
“When we blow our coverages, they capitalized,” KU linebacker Rich Miller said.
Through it all, though, one of Leipold’s top disappointments had to be his team losing its cool in the fourth quarter — something the coach hadn’t seen in blowout losses up to this point.
Thompson remained down grabbing his ribs for a few seconds after Potter’s hit, with teammates later helping him up on the K-State sideline. KU team leader Kenny Logan also was assessed a personal-foul penalty on the same play.
“It’s not acceptable — that we want in our program — or the one (penalty) that followed after,” Leipold said. “And that’s one thing: When things don’t go right, the next thing everyone can start poking at is your composure and your discipline. And we’re not going to accept that.”
Miller admitted that Potter’s hit came toward the end of a heated affair. Though K-State won its 13th straight game in the series, he said both teams felt the intensity.
“They were playing a little chippy all game,” Miller said of K-State. “But they did a good job at forcing us to do that (personal-foul penalties), but we’ve got to have more discipline to not fall for the tricks. It was a little bit emotional, but we’ve got to be able to control that a little bit more.”
In the aggregate, perhaps KU didn’t learn much about itself Saturday. The offense sputtered at times, though weird circumstances played into at least part of that, as KU quarterbacks Jason Bean and Miles Kendrick both suffered injuries in the first half.
That brought on third-stringer Jalon Daniels, a freshman whose plan was to redshirt this season after playing in two of the allowed four games before Saturday.
He showed flashes in the third quarter — including some nice passes on KU’s 80-yard touchdown drive — but couldn’t generate enough for an offense that never found rhythm in the run game.
Leipold’s QB decision next week likely will depend on the injury report. The coach didn’t have any major updates postgame, though he indicated Bean’s injury was less severe than Kendrick’s.
The bottom line from Saturday, though, was that KU performed like most would have expected.
And that was like a team needing more development before it can realistically compete with its in-state rival.
“As I’ve said for a long time, our margin for error is very small,” Leipold said. “And we’ve got to find a way to overcome things that don’t go our way and respond a little bit better than we have.”
This story was originally published November 6, 2021 at 5:11 PM.
