The bowl and the opponent may be underwhelming, but the Hogs have a shot to have winning seasons for two straight years. That’s nothing to sneeze at. The Hogs will need to be ready, as Kansas has to be fired up for their first bowl in a long time.
Meet the Jayhawks
After sinking to the level of the worst Power Five team in the country over the 2010s, Kansas is back on the up-and-up under second-year coach Lance Leipold. This will be their first bowl game since the 2008 Insight Bowl.
Mark Mangino (2002-2009) took the Jayhawks to four bowl games, including the program’s lone BCS bowl in 2007. After he was fired, Kansas collapsed. Turner Gill, Charlie Weis, Clint Bowen, David Beaty, and Les Miles went a combined 20-108 from 2010 to 2020, including 6-91 in Big 12 play.
In 2021, the Jayhawks hired Leipold. It was a brilliant hire: Leipold went 109-6 as the head coach of Wisconsin-Whitewater, with six Division III national titles in eight seasons. He then turned Buffalo around with two MAC East titles in his last three seasons. That may sound like a small-time resume, but here’s the thing: winners win. And Leipold is a winner. After a 2-10 first season, the Jayhawks are 6-6 and back in a bowl game.
The Jayhawks opened 5-0 against a backloaded schedule. Star quarterback Jalon Daniels was injured in a College GameDay showdown against TCU, and there was a very real chance that the Jayhawks might go 0-7 down the stretch. But they rallied to crush a fading Oklahoma State 37-16 on November 5th and secure bowl eligibility.
However, outside of that one big win over the Pokes, they have not looked good in a while. They allowed 40+ points in each of their final three games after allowing 52 to Oklahoma and 35 to Baylor in October. Daniels has returned, but he can’t help their struggling defense.
Model pick: Arkansas 30, Kansas 30. The model is not considering that some elements of this matchup favor Arkansas… but it’s also not considering that Arkansas has way more opt-outs than Kansas.
When Kansas has the ball
Kansas’ offense is wild. The Jayhawks will use a ton of different formations, all kinds of pre-snap motion, and several misdirection concepts. You’ll see throwbacks and reverses and end-arounds. It’s insanely creative, and more importantly, it works.
Here’s a typical play: a direct snap to the running back, who hands off to Daniels, who throws a touchdown pass:
Kansas has to do stuff like this due to an overwhelming lack of talent. Creativity is required because they can’t play straight up and hope to have a chance. That makes this offense extremely difficult to prepare for.
Opponents that were either extremely talented (Texas) or extremely well-coached (Iowa State) were able to stop this offense, but everyone else mostly got torched. With Arkansas dealing with a new staff and a ton of opt-outs and injuries, I’m not sure I would call the Hogs’ defense either overwhelmingly talented or well-coached.
Most of the creativity is through the air, but the Jayhawks’ run game is solid too. They create big runs at a good clip, and that’s the main way they can hurt you. Star running back Devin Neal (170 carries, 1,090 yards, 6.4 yards per rush) is really good, but there’s some dropoff after him, as backfield mate Devin Hishaw – who has not played since October after suffering an injury – is not expected to play and third-stringer Ky Thomas recording much lower efficiency this season.
Kansas’ awesome pass game is thanks to Daniels, who is both an accurate passer and an elite runner. Kansas’ best passing performances were back in September: against Houston, Daniels threw for 158 yards and three touchdowns and rushed for 123 yards and two more scores. Against Duke, he threw for 324 yards and four scores while adding 83 yards and a score on the ground. Through the season’s first month, he was 66 of 91 (73%) for for 890 yards (9.8 per attempt) with 11 touchdowns and one interception. He had also added 38 rushes for 324 yards (8.4 per rush) with four touchdowns. Crazy stuff, and he was legitimately a Heisman contender.
But then he got hurt against TCU and missed an entire month. He returned for the penultimate game against Texas and also started the Kansas State game, but he was much less effective. Over those two starts, he was 37 of 58 (64%) for 398 yards (6.9 per attempt) with two touchdowns and one interception. He also had a combined 10 rushing attempts for 63 yards (6.3 per rush) and one score.
During Daniels’ absence, Kansas didn’t suffer a huge dropoff under 2021 starter Jason Bean. Bean averaged 246 passing yards per game during the five games where he played most of the snaps with 14 touchdowns and four picks. He added 33 carries for 203 yards. He’s a good player, but given the sad state of the Kansas defense, the Jayhawks need a truly dynamic player at quarterback to succeed, and Bean isn’t it. Because Bean isn’t an extremely-elusive runner, Kansas had to throw much more with Bean in the game, making it harder for them to truly break down opposing defenses.
When Arkansas has the ball
Kansas’ awesome offense has to win shootouts because the defense is truly horrific. The news got worse for the Jayhawks when star safety Kenny Logan, who leads the team with 96 tackles and also has a couple interceptions, showed up at the team hotel in Memphis wearing a walking boot. Defensive coordinator Brian Borland has since said he expects Logan to play, but he may be limited.
The Jayhawk defense is decent at limiting explosive plays, which helps them against weak offenses (like Iowa State) that can’t put together long drives. They depend on forcing turnovers (58th) or waiting for opposing offenses to bog down. But they are horrible at unleveraging opponents and awful in the red zone, which means that any offense that doesn’t shoot itself in the foot can simply march up and down the field against them.
Run defense has been Kansas’ biggest weakness. The Jayhawks don’t allow a ton of huge runs, but they are awful at creating negative runs, which means they struggle to get opponents behind the chains.
This is really, really good news for Arkansas. The Hogs’ run game is vulnerable to negative plays, as you can see in the chart. Opponents that can make them go backward can throw them off.
Let’s rank every 2022 FBS opponent on the Hogs’ schedule by how good they were at creating negative runs:
- Liberty – 13th- Loss
- Alabama – 18th – Loss
- Mississippi State – 21st – Loss
- Mizzou – 24th – Loss
- LSU – 31st – Loss
- Texas A&M – 67th – Loss
- Cincinnati – 70th – Win
- Auburn – 76th – Win
- Ole Miss – 89th – Win
- BYU – 118th – Win
- Kansas – 125th – ???
- South Carolina – 127th – Win
Uhhhhhhh… it can’t be that simple, right? But it might be. The Hogs scored at least 31 points and rushed for at least 200 yards in all five wins (42 points and 281 rushing yards per game) and failed to either score 31 points or rush for 200 yards in all six losses.
Arkansas is very dependent on getting its run game going. If that doesn’t happen, the Hogs are in all kinds of trouble. The Hogs are fine with defenses capable of taking away big runs (like Kansas), but what they cannot tolerate is a defense that makes them go backwards (like Liberty). So, for those wondering, Kansas is not like Liberty on defense. Not at all.
The Kansas pass defense isn’t great either, though the Hogs are missing just every seasoned receiver other than Matt Landers. But with the above run numbers, it may not matter, as Arkansas has four starters on the offensive line plus Rocket Sanders ready to go.
Keys to the Game
- Keep driving forward. Kansas’ defense is in a really difficult spot in this matchup, as they are completely incapable of doing the one thing you have to do to stop the Arkansas offense. The Hogs should probably rush for 300 yards in this game, and the way to be able to keep running is to never go backward.
- Take away the big plays. Kansas’ offensive creativity creates a ton of big plays. When those don’t come, they become a more average offense. With a friendly matchup on the other side of the ball, Arkansas should be very happy with a bend-don’t-break approach that forces the Jayhawks to play Arkansas’ game.
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