Kansas Football: Should you buy into the hype for the 2-0 Jayhawks?

Kansas football, now 2-0, is generating buzz like it hasn’t in more than a decade after its Week 2 overtime road win against West Virginia.

With a 55-42 overtime win against West Virginia last Saturday, Kansas football has now won the season’s first two games for the first time since 2011. The Jayhawks, now 2-0 (1-0 Big 12), will travel to Houston in Week 3 to face a Cougars team (1-1) that just lost a last-second decision to Texas Tech.

Houston will be a new conference foe of the Jayhawks within 12 months from now. Speaking of the Big 12, the Jayhawks have a winning record in league play for the first time since 2009.

Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels made big plays throughout the game, completing 18-of-29 passes for 219 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions. He also rushed for 85 yards on 12 carries, constantly dodging the West Virginia pass rush (which finished with zero sacks). Eight different Jayhawks had a reception, led by junior Luke Grimm, who had six catches for 66 yards.

Kansas also totaled 200 rushing yards, averaging 5.6 yards per carry against the Mountaineers — no small feat for a KU squad that ranked second-to-last in the Big 12 and No. 88 in the nation within rushing offense last year. That includes sophomore Daniel Hishaw Jr.’s 30-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter that put the Jayhawks up 42-31.

It’s hard to put into perspective how pitiful Kansas football has been in the last 15 years. While the men’s basketball team is hoisting up national titles, the football team has been one of the worst “power conference” teams to compete in the FBS.

Consider that before the Jayhawks’ improbable 57-56 win at Texas last season, Kansas hadn’t defeated a Big 12 team on the road in 13 years. In that span, the Jayhawks went 9-106, good enough for a paltry .078 winning percentage — by far the worst winning percentage of any team in any conference at the NCAA Division I FBS level.

In other words, Kansas has averaged 0.7 league wins per season since 2009 and has already exceeded that average for 2022 by mid-September.

Given the Week 2 road win against West Virginia, College football fans and Kansas fans now have to wonder if the Jayhawks have consigned this era of amazing futility to the dustbins of history.

Under second-year head coach Lance Leipold, the Jayhawks have now won two of their previous four Big 12 contests and have come within one possession in both of those losses to conclude the 2021 season.

Leipold has engineered some impressive turnarounds before — most notably at Buffalo, which he led to a 10-win season in 2018 after going 2-10 two years before. That 2018 Bulls squad lost in the Mid-American title game by one point but recorded the highest win total in school history at the FBS level after rejoining Division I’s top flight in 1999.

It’s true that the Jayhawks’ Week 2 opponent, West Virginia, isn’t a particularly strong team — the Mountaineers have finished with a losing record in two of the past three seasons. Morgantown is a tough place to visit, though, as West Virginia has posted a 33-6 record as a home favorite (a .846 winning percentage) in the past decade.

Before you go all in and buy into the KU football bandwagon right now, take note that the last Kansas team to start 2-0 in 2011 lost its next 10 games in a row. Those 2-10 Jayhawks saw the end of a once-promising second-year coach’s (Turner Gill) time in Lawrence before Charlie Weis took over for the 2012 season.