Defense showed signs, but offense and special teams faltered

The offense and special teams picked the wrong to have their worse performances on the year. Why?

Because the defense played its best game of the year on the road against Iowa State in a 45-0 loss.

Iowa State moved to a two-quarterback system changing the styles for each one. Kansas defensive coordinator changed to a bigger personnel when the running quarterback Joel Lanning entered the game. They held him to 34 yards on eight carries.

They also held the Cyclones leading rusher David Montgomery to 75 yards on 21 carries.

“I thought our defense did a nice job of keeping us in the game for a long time,” Kansas head coach David Beaty said.

The defense had nine tackles for a loss and three sacks. Joe Dineen played his best game of the season with 16 tackles and two for a loss. Back-up linebacker Osaze Ogbebor had eight tackles. Playing his first meaningful time defensive lineman Keyshaun Simmons had five tackles and one for a loss.

“We had seven three-and-outs on defense, which is pretty good,” Beaty said. “We haven’t had that all year. Being able to play some complementary football would have been nice.”

The defense needed some help and didn’t get it from the offense. Peyton Bender and Carter Stanley combined to complete 11 passes for only 44 yards.

“It’s just not good enough,” Beaty said. “I can sit here and quantify it if I want to, but at the end of the day it’s not going to matter. We’ve got to be able to move the ball offensively to be able to create scoring in this conference because it’s a conference that people put the ball in the end zone.”

The ground game wasn’t a lot better. They rushed the ball 33 times for 89 yards. Maybe the most disappointing fact was it came against a defensive front that wasn’t loading up the stop the run.

“They were in a three down front and dropping eight all day,” Beaty said. “You’ve got to be able to run the football against that and we weren’t able to do that with any consistency.”

Stanley and Bender got chances but never got in a groove. The Cyclones played a zone that rarely left open passing alleys. The offense couldn’t sustain drives.

““We had 11 three-and-outs today, which is not acceptable,” Beaty said. “We knew it was going to be an issue today in terms of scoring against this team to make sure that we score enough points because they’re capable of doing it.”

Special teams had a day similar to the offense. The Cyclones had a 7-0 lead when Trever Ryen returned a punt 68 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter to extend the lead to 14-0.

Cole Moss had a snap go over his head and another one he dropped.

The special teams errors led to two others scores.