Chiefs trips to AFC West foes a reminder of great Jayhawks secondary

As Kansas was assembling its 2007 football team, the Jayhawks knew what they had in Aqib Talib, a good-sized, athletic cornerback coming off an All-Big 12 season.

After that questions remained in the secondary.

What evolved was amazing. By season’s end, Kansas would field arguably its greatest team, capture a major bowl victory and set a school record for victories.

A catalyst for that success will greet the Chiefs over each of the next two weeks, a secondary that morphed into team’s greatest defensive strength and in hindsight perhaps one of the best units assembled on the college level in recent years with three NFL Pro Bowlers.

Cornerbacks Talib and Chris Harris are now with the Broncos, though Talib will sit out Sunday’s game against the Chiefs while serving a one-game suspension. The Chargers and reserve safety Darrell Stuckey await the following week.

Harris and Stuckey were chosen to the Pro Bowl for the first time last season, along with Talib, a two-time Pro Bowler.

“We end up being in the same Pro Bowl, so it just made it even more special we could all be there together,” Harris said.

They’re all at a peak professional level. Talib got there first. He was the first Kansas player taken in the first round of the NFL Draft in 15 years when the Bucs selected him 20th in 2008. He had good seasons in Tampa Bay before he was traded to the Patriots. He’s in his second year with the Broncos.

Talib ranks seventh among active players with 30 career interceptions, but his career hasn’t been without controversy. He was suspended for four games in 2012 testing positive for Adderall, admitting he took the performance-enhancing drug without a prescription by mistake.

He’s not playing Sunday because he poked the eye of Colts tight end Dwayne Allen in the fourth quarter last week.

When he does play, Talib has a knack for jumping routes, a skill developed by studying hours of tape. He swiped a short Alex Smith pass just before halftime in the first Chiefs-Broncos meeting in September as if he knew it were coming.

Harris also collected an interception against the Chiefs and returned a pick 74 yards for a touchdown against the Raiders to seal a victory.

“Chris is at the top of his game and still has room to grow,” former Broncos Pro Bowler Champ Bailey told the Denver Post. “Talib is in his prime. When you have corners like that, it makes all the difference.”

The 7-1 Broncos will miss Talib this week as Bradley Roby, who returned Jamaal Charles’ fumble for the game-winning touchdown earlier this season, fills in.

“He’s hurt, he’s definitely disappointed in himself,” Harris said of Talib.

Stuckey was voted to the Pro Bowl last season as special-teams gunner and is the Chargers’ special-teams captain. A former Washington High quarterback, Stuckey is listed as a second-team safety, and his reputation as an energy player has never been more needed for a San Diego team that’s 2-7.

Together, the three defensive backs helped give Kansas a remarkable season few saw coming.

As 2007 approached, the Jayhawks figured to improve on a break-even 2006 season that didn’t end in a bowl game. But coach Mark Mangino’s sixth Kansas team was picked to finish fourth in the Big 12 North and didn’t receive a vote in the preseason top 25 poll.

As for the secondary, Talib was a proven strength, and Kansas had planned to go with a junior-college transfer, Kendrick Harper at the other corner. But Harper broke a wrist early in fall camp, and next man up was Harris, a freshman from Bixby, Okla.

“When Kendrick went down we thought, “Oh, boy, we’re done,’ ” said Je’Ney Jackson, the Kansas’ strength and conditioning coach who was in his first year as KU’s cornerbacks coach in 2007. “You have no idea what a true freshman can do.”

It didn’t take long for the 5-foot-10 Harris to open eyes.

“So much tenacity,” Jackson said. “He’s an undersized guy who scrapped and scratched and clawed for everything. He wasn’t afraid to hit people. He became our starter and took it and ran with it.”

Stuckey was beginning his third season at Kansas, having redshirted and appearing in seven games in 2006. He was ticketed to start at safety.

“Darrell was a work in progress,” said Kansas assistant head coach Clint Bowen, the team’s co-defensive coordinator in 2007. “He was raw when we got him here, physically gifted but had to learn how to play.

“But if you know Darrell, he works his way through everything and he has this great will to succeed. He built his way into becoming a great football player.”

Kansas got off to an amazing start, overwhelming four easy nonconference opponents by nearly seven touchdowns per game. A victory at Kansas State got the Big 12 season off to a winning start, and the success continued. The secondary grew stronger and a late-season victory at Oklahoma State proved memorable.

The Cowboys had two big-time wide receivers, Adarius Bowman and Dez Bryant. This would be the secondary’s greatest challenge. Talib was on Bowman, considered the bigger threat, and in the second quarter Bowman injured his knee on a Talib hit and left the game. That allowed Kansas to switch Talib on Bryant for the rest of the game.

The team started 11-0 when it met Missouri at Arrowhead Stadium. The winner would move into No. 1 in the country and play in the Big 12 championship game the next week.

“We felt they were compared to the Oklahoma defense we saw that year,” said Chiefs backup quarterback Chase Daniel, then the Tigers’ starter. “I remember we had to throw underneath early to soften things up. We felt like we had to get the ball out quick against them.”

The Tigers did and handed Kansas its lone loss 36-28. The Jayhawks went on to defeat Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl, with the game’s first score coming on Talib’s interception of a Tyrod Taylor pass that he returned 60 yards for a touchdown.

The Jayhawks finished 12-1 in a season that was defined by the play of quarterback Todd Reesing and the secondary. Kansas finished in the top five nationally in scoring offense and scoring defense.

“We had good players all over the defense, but we weren’t a premier pass-rush team,” Bowen said. “We had to generate it with blitzes and pressure. We played entire games with our cornerbacks were on their own and we didn’t even talk about helping them. They didn’t need it.”

Talib left after the season. Stuckey became an All-Big 12 selection and Harris became a team captain as a senior. Stuckey was a fourth-round pick in 2010, Harris went undrafted.

“They went on to become something else,” Jackson said. “Three Pro Bowlers in one secondary. I wonder how many times that’s happened?”

This story was originally published November 13, 2015 at 9:05 PM with the headline "Chiefs trips to AFC West foes a reminder of great Jayhawks secondary."