Rock Chalk Roundtable - Episode 1: Strengths

With the season kicking off on Friday, the RCT staff got together to preview the season. This is part one of a three part series. A trilogy if you will. Today we are looking over the strengths of this KU Football team.

What do you see as a strength for the team this season?

Tim: If I am limited to choosing players or position groups I will pick the offensive line. As the season wore on last year, they as much as any group on the field showed their growth to competence. Their solid performance provided Jalon Daniels and Jared Casey the opportunity to deliver the victory over Texas and the glimmer of hope KU fans saw late last season.

If not limited to players on the field, I will choose the coaching staff. It has been a long time since KU has had a competent coaching staff with a plan proven to produce winning football teams. Since Mangino was shown the door, KU has had maybe one competent coach, Les(s) Miles. But he never seemed like the right fit or fully engaged in his brief time in Lawrence. Otherwise, it has been a string of coaches and coaching staffs devoid of any real competence. It is not like any of them have left for greener pastures and success at any level. Leipold and his staff implemented their plan and were able to put a team on the field that looked significantly better at the end of the 2021 season than it was at the start of the season.

David: I agree with Tim that the o-line should (surprisingly) be a strength, but I’ll go further and say the whole offense. Even when KU was playing more competitive football later in 2021, the defense still struggled quite a bit. The offense didn’t lose much talent from the group that started hanging some points on Big 12 competition, and now they’ve had an entire offseason to gel and get the entire offense established. With Kansas football we’re always speaking in relative terms, so I don’t expect them to look like the Reesing-era Jayhawks all of a sudden, but I think this team could score a respectable amount of points this year.

Fizzle: I have to check myself when thinking of the strengths of this team. It seems with every new coach we’ve had, we had some bright spots in the first season. Maybe there is a surprise win or we played a tough team close that first year. We say it will be different this time. But you guys, it feels different this year. The puff pieces are different (Matt Tait once wrote an article where he described the “look of determination as Montel Cozart fixed his chin strap”). We saw some legit great times last year. We have a good coach who has proven himself. I dare say this is the brightest KU football has looked in some time. I like this coaching staff and for the first time in a long time, I’m excited about KU football.

Check back tomorrow as we review the weaknesses