The aggressiveness of the KU offense rarely matched the performance in the game against Illinois
Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels passes during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Illinois, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Champaign, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Champaign, Ill. — The week before Kansas’ loss to Illinois, new KU offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes was asked if he thought it might be an advantage that the Illini hadn’t seen much of how he planned to use the Jayhawks’ offense.
“I hope so,” he replied.
But when it came time to play, it was the Illini who provided the element of surprise. From the first play, when they lined up with four down linemen, they deviated from his expectations, as KU quarterback Jalon Daniels said.
“They came out and did a lot of things that they didn’t show on film,” Daniels said, “and I feel like they just came out here and made a lot of plays.”
Sure, Grimes and the Jayhawks made a fair amount of mistakes on Saturday night – wild looks, eclectic pre-snap moves, odd personnel lineups, plenty of what made the KU offense stand out in years past under Andy Kotelnicki. But what was ultimately most surprising about the Jayhawks’ offense on Saturday night was how bad it proved to be in key moments.
When the Jayhawks could have chosen to go down the field, they repeatedly played it cautious. Later, when they did decide to make more aggressive shots, Daniels couldn’t make the shots he needed to make, leading to one of the worst starts of his career. It was a shockingly bad timing, both the playmaker and the personnel responsible for, that – yes, even though KU’s defense didn’t come off the field in the fourth quarter – led directly to the Jayhawks’ 23-17 loss.
To be fair, and to acknowledge a point that head coach Lance Leipold made very clearly after the game, it may not be entirely accurate to say that the Jayhawks, by and large, “struggled” on offense.
“We gained more yards than them, we had a 100-yard rusher … we made 6 of 13 third downs, we didn’t make a fourth down conversion,” he said. “You know, we’re playing a good Big Ten football team. It’s not going to be like we’re playing on the air, quite the opposite.”
In fact, Devin Neal ran for 101 yards but only got 14 carries, even though the teams were never separated by more than a point at any point in the game. Daniels, meanwhile, threw the ball 32 times and managed just 141 yards, which was his lowest yards-per-attempt mark since taking over as KU’s starter in late 2021. As Grimes said, KU strives for balance, and the Jayhawks actually ended up with 33 carries on 32 passes — but very few of those runs went to the Jayhawks’ record-setting tailback.
The 32 passes also left a lot to be desired. Daniels threw three interceptions, which was more than his two touchdowns, but it was not only his merit that he finished the game with such an ugly statistic.
How it happened
Early in the second quarter, KU faced a third-and-13 at the Illinois 18-yard line, which was theoretically within field goal range of any college kicker, including Tabor Allen. Instead of attempting a shot into the end zone, Grimes called a play that resulted in Daniels throwing a quick block to Luke Grimm, who ran seven yards.
Daniels, whose deep running connection to Grimm was crucial to KU’s victory over Illinois in 2023, completed just one pass of more than eight yards in the first 33 minutes of play this time. That included another pass to Grimm on the ensuing drive after the third-and-13 screen that missed the uprights on the fourth-and-2 screen, leaving Grimm unable to fight his way forward and convert. Improbably, that included another third-and-13 screen at a crucial moment.
KU took a 10-6 lead late in the first half, and Grimes resorted to his tricks to create a fake speed option between Daniels and Daniel Hishaw Jr. that actually turned into a reverse to Quentin Skinner. But Skinner missed a pitch and lost seven yards, and Illinois, which had three timeouts, decided to use one of them to give itself a chance to get the ball back.
To get the Jayhawks out of that hole, KU then opted for a swing pass to tight end Jared Casey. Not only is Casey far from the Jayhawks’ most dangerous player, the route took him close to the perimeter, and he ended up out of bounds. That saved the Illini a timeout by stopping the clock, but it also meant the Jayhawks could feel more free to try their luck on third-and-13.
Instead, they set up a block for Skinner. Daniels threw a pick-6 to Xavier Scott.
“I didn’t get a chance to see him,” Daniels said. “I had seen the D-end right in front of me, so I had to try to throw over the D-end, and he made a play right behind the D-end.”
That was the biggest momentum swing — and perhaps the biggest play of all — of the game, giving Illinois a 13-10 lead, but KU didn’t try to regain the lead in the little time remaining. With 26 seconds left from their own 32-yard line, Daniels handed off one time to Hishaw to run out the clock.
“We didn’t want to give them another chance to happen,” Leipold said. “Momentum was definitely on their side. We went aggressive in the previous series and it didn’t work. We didn’t want to give them another chance… We need to calm them down and get our guys settled down.”
As Leipold noted, they still scored a touchdown the next time.
Later in the second half, however, the screen-heavy approach of the second quarter gave way to a new kind of aggressiveness that didn’t pay off. Daniels got more opportunities to take risks, but he failed to complete a single pass between his touchdown to Lawrence Arnold and the final minute of the game, a nearly 20-minute span that included three KU drives.
The first drive was a tricky one. The referees assessed a defensive pass interference penalty on Daniels’ incomplete pass to open the series, drawing the ire of Leipold, who said after the game, “I often hear, ‘The philosophy is not to throw flags, so you better be sure when you throw one.’ So where did you get so unsure?” The next time Daniels threw the ball after Casey narrowly managed a first down, he threw short to Skinner as he was heading into the end zone and was intercepted.
The second drive early in the fourth quarter gave KU another chance to extend its lead. Neal ran for seven yards, about his average on the night, before Daniels and Grimm failed to complete a long play-action pass and Daniels threw to Skinner on the other side of the field. The third drive, with KU trailing, included just one pass that was nullified by pressure.
“It’s easy to question that now and say, ‘Why didn’t you just give it back to (Neal) on the second try?'” Leipold said of the second drive. “But our offense is built the way we did: We’re aggressive and we mix it up. I don’t want to take away from the plays or anything like that, because when it works and things work, we’ve always liked to see the results, and tonight we just didn’t quite do that.”
In fact, the ability to capitalize on such opportunities has been the foundation of KU’s offense. Since Grimes’ arrival last winter, the Jayhawks have continued to pride themselves on their fearless style of play. But in their first real chance to prove they can carry that ethos into a new season, they took risks at the wrong moments.
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Written by Henry Greenstein
