Inside the Tent: South Florida 37, Kansas 34

“Listen, I’m not impressed that we were in that much of a hole. I liked the way the kids displayed character and fought back and everything, but we put ourselves in that position, so hopefully it’s a learning experience for us.”
--Mark Mangino

From the Living Room

The challenge here is to not over-react after giving it away at the end like that. You have to look at this for what is was -- a close road loss to a ranked team with a lot of hard-hitting athletes. The main thing will be what will the Jayhawk players and coaches do with this.

A lot of fans will look at the offensive line and tackle play as the #1 concern. Sure their were some issues on the edge, but you know what -- at times they isolated Spikes on Selvie and sure he got schooled a number of times. However, on occasion he also made the play. Those guys are at the front end of their curve.

What "zooms" to the top of the list for me is the pass rush? Where's our George Selvie? Hey, I'll take a Jarriett Buie. We've been talking about this for a year-and-a-half now. I like our defensive ends and I don't want to pin this loss on them. They're Academic All-Americans and can stuff the run and play smart, solid "D." So they are really holding up their end of the bargain. You just can't escape the fact that we have not identified a legitimate pass rush specialist. Brandon Perkins, where art thou? Yeah, I was jealous of USF. Watching Todd Reesing duck, dance and hop around to avoid the blazing rush all night while on the opposite side Matt Grothe went through a pack of cigarettes in the pocket will do that to a guy. For the record, we did get some pressure on Grothe, but it wasn't the same kind of "Holy &*^*^! How in the heck did he get here that fast!" type of speed rushes that Buie and Selvie put out there.

So, if we don't have the talent for the pass rush, you need to use a scheme to do it. We saw validation that Clint Bowen really had been calling the defense for the past few years. Same plan as always -- no blitz on first down on their half of the field. Keep the linebackers five yards deep on first down -- great against the run, but not so great against the pass with a quarterback like Grothe (there a better QBs coming). Listen I thought we were clear on this -- you have to re-invent yourself every year. Break your tendencies.

Concern #2
This goes back to the quarterback battle between Bill Whittemore and Zach Dyer. It took about three plays for the fans to know that Whittemore was the real deal. Still in week 2, Dyer was the starter. Follow that up with the mis-calculation of not getting Jason Swanson prepared to play in 2005. How about continuing to play a one-armed Kerry Meier over Todd Reesing at the end of 2006? Listen carefully. Angus Quigley is the best running back on the field right now. If I can point to a single avoidable reason why we lost this game, it was that we didn't utilize Angus Quigley as a runner in the first half to bruise up the USF defense and shorten the game. I don't have the patience for this anymore. A coaching mistake cost us a very winnable game.

Concern #3
Putting up 34 on the road against USF is a great output (only scored more at OSU last year [43]). The one thing that bothers me is that I didn't see anything new. Understandable against FIU and LA Tech, but this was a big game. There's a whole season of film on this offense and teams are going to come at us prepared. Innovate or die.

The Randoms

• Hey, the national pundits finally had their day. Wee! Keep saying it every game and eventually you are right. I'm impressed.
  
• Kerry Meier. 11 receptions, 120 yards. Really I don't need to say anything else.
  
• Nice breakout by Johnathan Wilson 10 catches, 171 yards and two TDs.
  
• You got the feeling that the USF defense had #80 and #28 burned in their brains.
  
• This is a rough one. USF obviously showed what they could do, but with the game on the line in the fourth quarter, it really didn't seem like they did anything to win the game other than the safety making a great runback. KU was stuffing their run and moving the ball all over. Quigley was running hard. It just comes down to what you think is a fairly safe deep ball that gets picked and returned for a field goal attempt. I feel unsatisfied. Like Teddy KGB just took me for three stacks of high society.

Comments

[Matt Tidwell]

Amen to all, DJ. I was thinking "the winner of this game will be the one with the best pass rush" and that seemed to play out. By the way, was working my gig for CBS sports in the broadcast booth at today's Chiefs game and got to talking about Todd Reesing before the game with Kevin Harlan (a great KU alum and, in my opinion, one of the very best in the business). Anyway, we were we were both in agreement about Chris Spielman's comment on the KU-SF broadcast that the absolute best Reesing comparison is to Fran Tarkenton. Not just the old Viking's ability to scramble but the sick throws he could make on one foot, no feet, standing on his head, etc etc.! We need to get one of those creative video editors out there to splice together a Reesing-Tarkenton video montage!

[DJ]

I agree with the Tark comment as well ... just very good at creating more time and then finding someone downfield. Lots of guys can create the time, but few can get set and make the accurate pass.