I guess if you have to go 14 years between bowl games, this is the way you want to return.
Well, kind of.
A win sure would have been nice. And not going down by 25 points would have made for a more interesting game.
But the Kansas Football Jayhawks sure found a way to make Wednesday’s Liberty Bowl exciting. They nearly capped off a year of unforgettable KU comebacks with another epic one.
My viewing experience was fortuitous. We sat down for dinner just as KU fell apart and Arkansas took control of the game late in the first quarter. So while I heard what was going on, I wasn’t an active participant. To my eye Jalon Daniels seemed to be really struggling. His throws didn’t seem as crisp or powerful as they were before his shoulder injury. As the deficit got bigger and he continued to look like 80% – at best – of his full capabilities, I figured a loss was inevitable.
Thus I pretty casually watched the second and third quarters. Three different times I was ready to either flip to something else or mute the TV and watch something else on my laptop. Turns out I was pretty cozy under my blanket and didn’t feel like going to grab the MacBook.
Kids, sometimes being lazy pays off! Had I switched I would not have seen the Jayhawks get their shit together and make a huge rally.
Let’s be honest and fair: Arkansas seemed to totally check out when the fourth quarter started, from the players to the coaching staff. And KU benefited from a clearly incorrect call, when they pounced on a fumble and turned it into a score a few plays later.
Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, right? KU took advantage of those breaks, Jalon found his mojo, KU converted an onside kick and a two-point conversion in the final minute to tie, and we got the crazy, triple overtime ending.
Ahhh, the ending. My guess to friends immediately after Jason Bean tossed the ball out of the end zone without looking at a wide open Mason Fairchild was, “We must have been out of two-point plays,” turned out to be correct. Or at least that’s what Lance Leipold told the media after the game.
I’m no football coach, and I understand how two-point plays need to be crafted for a specific yardage and specific need. But with an offense as inventive and complex as KU’s, shouldn’t they be able to make just about anything into a two-point play?
I was mad at the coaches for about five minutes. I was never mad at Jason Bean. That’s a tough-ass spot to put a kid who had only been on the field for a couple of plays. It feels like the better play would have been to send Jalon out wide, have Bean pitch/lateral to him, and then JD makes the final pass. I mean, the kid just broke the bowl game and school records for passing yards in a single game.[1] You don’t take the ball out of his hands. Coaches getting too cute.
Bean got KU to a bowl game by beating Oklahoma State. He damn near beat TCU when Daniels got hurt. That’s a terrible way for him to end his career, and he deserves no blame.
In the end, it was a fun if frustrating game. That’s about all you can ask for one of these crappy, mid-tier bowl games. There are still a lot of games to be played, but it feels like this one will end up near the top of best games of this bowl season.
The important thing was KU was in a bowl game. I would have been thrilled with three wins this year. We got six plus a game in late December. That was a huge accomplishment for this program, which has been so bad for so long.
Now comes the truly hard part: keeping it going.
Rock Chalk, bitches.
I still say he wasn’t near 100%. ↩