LAWRENCE (AP) — Kansas head coach Turner Gill went through his entire first season at Kansas without winning two consecutive games. After all, the Jayhawks only won three times all year.
It’s safe to assume they are feeling pretty good about the 2-0 record they will be taking to Georgia Tech on Saturday. They got a bunch of talented freshmen up to speed with an easy win over McNeese State, and then proved Saturday night they could win a shootout, 45-42 against Northern Illinois.
Even though some glaring holes remain, primarily on defense, one thing is already clear: Kansas has made plenty of long strides since opening last season with a loss to North Dakota State.
“We’ve made a lot of progress,” linebacker Steven Johnson said after the Jayhawks’ win over the Huskies, which wasn’t secure until quarterback Jordan Webb found D.J. Beshears at the goal line on fourth down for the go-ahead touchdown in the final seconds.
“The coaches find things we aren’t doing right and really harp on it,” Johnson said. “They really get after us and keep us humble. It allows us to keep pressing on toward the goal.”
Webb threw for a career-high 281 yards and three touchdowns against the Huskies. Beshears had seven catches for 70 yards and two scores, and along with his kick returns and an 18-yard carry totaled 285 all-purpose yards. All told, the Kansas offense piled up 534 yards against Northern Illinois, the highest total since a 41-39 loss to Missouri to wrap up the 2009 season.
Already, eight different Jayhawks have scored a touchdown. Among them are freshmen running backs Darrian Miller and Tony Pierson, who provide the kind of speed not seen in Lawrence — at least by the home team — since the 2007 season, when Kansas won the Orange Bowl.
“I think we’re confident,” Gill said. “We still have some work to do, but I’m proud of the way we keep moving forward in a great way. We’ll keep doing that while getting ready for the next one.”
Most of that work will probably come on defense, where the Jayhawks were gouged for 462 yards by Northern Illinois. That included 315 yards on 27-of-33 passing by Chandler Harnish, who felt afterward that he could have engineered one more scoring drive had the clock not run out.
While the sample size is small — just two games — Kansas already ranks 101st in total defense, giving up better than 440 yards on average. The passing defense is even worse, with only seven teams behind the Jayhawks, among them Ball State, Memphis and North Texas.
To make matters worse, Gill said Sunday that defensive tackle John Williams will miss the rest of the season after tearing an ACL. Williams had been one of the Jayhawks’ top run-stuffing linemen this season, and his loss will likely be magnified Saturday when they visit Georgia Tech, which runs a wishbone-style offense that is heavily geared toward the ground game.
“Last week we had correctable mistakes,” cornerback Greg Brown said. “This week, we were closer to the ball, we just didn’t make plays.”
No kidding.
Every time the Jayhawks scored, Northern Illinois seemed to march right down field for an answer, slicing and churning through the backpedaling defense. After Alex Mueller’s field goal with 8:50 remaining made it 38-35, the Huskies marched 85 yards for the go-ahead touchdown.
If not for Webb and Beshears finding their own answer, the outcome could have been different.
The thing is, it wasn’t. And that may be the biggest difference between these Jayhawks and the team that went 3-9 last year. They’ve already proven they can handle adversity, and now they hit the road for the first time this season with a chance to keep their perfect start intact.
“We’ve got a lot of great resolve,” Gill said. “They didn’t lose their composure at all. They kept believing.”