Daily briefing: On shaky offenses, the big, bad Sun Belt and Kansas
Ivan Maisel’s “Daily Briefing” for On3:
Tide, Irish, Aggies have offensive issues
Not that any of us overreact to the first results of the season – hold that Heisman campaign for Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson – but two games of evidence may be enough to say the offensive problems at Alabama, Notre Dame and Texas A&M are real. The Crimson Tide offensive line is not moving the pile the way it did as recently as two seasons ago. Take away Jase McClellan’s 81-yard touchdown run in the first quarter and Bryce Young’s 20-yard scramble in the fourth, and the Tide ran for 61 yards on 22 attempts at Texas. The Irish have averaged 3.1 yards per carry in two games, with exactly one “big play,” a 22-yard run by wide receiver Lorenzo Styles Jr. Now that quarterback Tyler Buchner is out for the year, there may be no quick fix. And the Aggies scored one offensive touchdown against a team that gave up 63 to North Carolina the previous week.
Sun Belt needs to avoid the rat poison
The results of Sun Belt teams knocking off No. 6 Texas A&M, No. 8 Notre Dame, Nebraska and Virginia Tech in the first two weeks of the season are easy to discern. Conference commissioner Keith Gill said Monday, “It sets you up on a different stage nationally” – literally if he meant ESPN College Gameday heading to Appalachian State this week. Why the Sun Belt has played so well isn’t as easy to discern. Gill and his coaches talked about the “commitment” (i.e., money) devoted to facilities on campus, stadium renovations and coaching hires. You still must make the right hires, and the Sun Belt has a strong coterie of young coaches. Charles Huff of Marshall, like the Nick Saban disciple that he is, dismissed the rat poison the Sun Belt has been served over the past 72 hours. “Sometimes when these things happen, you kind of get a little bit of, ‘We’ve arrived,’ ” Huff said. “We can’t allow that to happen here. … If you prepare any different for Bowling Green than you did for Notre Dame, then you did yourself a disservice.”
Kansas’ turnaround may be legit
Is it the coach or the players? I’ll leave it to you to decide whether to assign the credit for the turnaround at Kansas to second-year coach Lance Leipold or third-year quarterback Jalon Daniels. After a 55-42 overtime victory at West Virginia on Saturday night, the Jayhawks (2-0 overall, 1-0 in the Big 12) have won two of their past three Big 12 road games and lead the nation in scoring. They may have gone 2-10 last season, but Kansas began its climb when Leipold made Daniels the starting quarterback with three games remaining last season. Now Daniels is third in the nation in QBR (97.4), an eyelash behind USC’s Caleb Williams and TCU’s Max Duggan, and Kansas, which plays at Houston on Saturday, is no one’s patsy anymore.