Lance Leipold counting on Jalon Daniels to salvage Kansas’ season

MANHATTAN, Kan. — The quarterback is coming off a promising performance, despite a losing effort in the Sunflower Showdown, and his coach believes he can accomplish more in the final four games.

Coach Lance Leipold watched as Jalon Daniels went through some rough and bright spots on the road in front of 52,000-plus fans. Daniels wasn’t afraid of the hostile environment though. Leipold thought he made plays with his arm and legs, and was the main reason why Kansas took Kansas State down to the wire.

“All in all, I know Jalon end up having a couple of turnovers, but at the of the day, I thought he played extremely hard, and well,” Leipold said. “He created a lot of plays for us, so I’m proud of the way he played, and led our team.”

After all, the signal-caller brought the intensity Saturday night, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering Daniels missed last year’s Sunflower Showdown due to back tightness. Not to mention he led the Jayhawks on four touchdown drives.

Kansas also drew first blood after Daniels used his dual-threat capabilities to orchestrate an 11-play, 75-yard touchdown drive, that took over six minutes off the clock. There’s no denying that the Jayhawks set the tone for the game offensively, with several explosive plays. Daniels also connected with wideout Luke Grimm for a touchdown in the second quarter.

However, there were some mental errors by the Jayhawks in the first half, that were out of the gunslinger’s control. Towards the end of he first quarter, Daniels found Quentin Skinner for what should’ve been a 49-yard touchdown pass, but the wide receiver dropped it in the end zone. Cornerback Jameel Croft returned a kickoff, and accidentally stepped out of bounds at the one-yard line, which gave the offense bad field position.

On the next play Daniels handed the ball off to Devin Neal, but because of poor blocking, Kansas State’s defense tackled the running back in the endzone for a safety. Daniels had his share of mistakes too. Kansas (2-6) even had an opportunity to put more points on the board with 36 seconds left in the second quarter.

The Jayhawks had excellent field position with the ball at the Wildcats’ 35-yard line. Daniels took the first down snap, dropped back and tried to locate wideout Trevor Wilson between two defenders in the endzone, but overthrew him and was intercepted by Marques Sigle.

It frustrated Leipold that the offense left points off the scoreboard, but they only trailed by two at halftime. Although the Jayhawks scored two touchdowns in the third quarter, including an eight-yard run by Daniels, a missed extra point turned out to be costly.

Kansas had a one-point lead with under four minutes left in the fourth quarter, when Daniels committed the turnover of the game. The Jayhawks were facing a second and long when Daniels took a snap out of an empty backfield, scrambled out of the pocket and fumbled after a hit by linebacker Austin Romaine. Edge rusher Brendan Mott recovered the ball, and the turnover gave Kansas State premium field position to kick the go-ahead field goal.

Once the smoke cleared, Daniels completed 18 of his 31 passes for 209 yards, a touchdown and an interception. He also tied for first on the team with 66 yards on the ground, and a rushing score.

No doubt the loss to the Wildcats put a big dent in the Jayhawks’ season, and now their backs are against the wall. As the quarterback of the team, it’s only natural for Daniels to take the shoulder of the blame. Regardless of the matter, Leipold doesn’t feel Daniels should hang his head, believes it was a team effort, and there’s plenty of positive aspects to build on down the stretch.

“We’re not going to get into moral stuff, we’re a 2-6 football team right now and that’s not very good,” he said. “This team has a lot of talent, played hard, but came up short, and we all say winning is tough, winning on the road is even more difficult, still at the end I thought we had our chances.”

With six losses, the Jayhawks have to be victorious in each of their final four games to become bowl eligible for a third-straight year. That’s going to be a tough task with Iowa State, BYU and Colorado up next, so Leipold has to utilize the bye-week. Most importantly, Leipold is going to need Daniels and his teammates to pick up where they left off.

“You always want to get back to fundamentals, we liked our schedule with giving them some time away, hopefully you can get some time back in the weight room, and a chance to work with some of our younger players again will be important.”