Lance Leipold talks about bye week, previews fast-paced West Virginia

Kansas finished non-conference play 2-1 after taking its first loss to Missouri last Saturday. Lance Leipold reflected on how the Jayhawks improved during their bye week, and previewed their Big 12 opener against West Virginia.

Leipold thinks Kansas ‘got a lot accomplished’ during bye week

The Jayhawks had the week off to reflect and improve after suffering their first loss of the season. Leipold said he thought the team handled it well, challenging them while also trying to work on getting healthy.

“We challenged the guys again,” Leipold said. “Their attitude’s been good, work ethic’s been good. I think we got a lot accomplished. We tried to take some reps off a few guys, try to work on getting healthy, but also addressing things that we need to get better at.”

Some of the things Kansas addressed during the bye week included physicality up front. The Jayhawks struggled against Missouri’s front seven and struggled to run the ball. Leipold said he thought Kansas lost the battle in the trenches and wants the offensive front to be more consistent.

“Being a physical, fundamental team that’s going to tackle well and play physical up front,” Leipold said of where he wants to see Kansas improve. “Again, I still think our defensive front for the most part has been active and physical and doing things, but offensively we’ve got to be consistent up front in doing those things to give us the true balance that we need to be the type of offense we like to be.”

Defensively, Kansas missed a lot of tackles against Missouri. The Jayhawks have shown flashes of being a good defense, but didn’t play up to the standard needed against a good opponent.

“We’ve shown flashes of being a really good defense—being multiple and athletic and doing those things,” Leipold said. “But again, playing a really good opponent, some of that did not reach the standards we need to play winning football.”

West Virginia physical and gritty under Rich Rodriguez

Rich Rodriguez started his second stint as head coach of the Mountaineers this season. His team suffered a road loss to Ohio in Week 2, but bounced back to take a game in overtime from rival Pittsburgh last week.

“Saturday’s game, first of all, it’s a big testament to their staff and their leadership in their program because they had a disappointing loss on the road,” Leipold said. “And then to get that group rallied, obviously, in a rivalry game, and to play the way they did was highly impressive.”

Leipold called West Virginia physical in gritty, a testament to the culture Rodriguez has been able to build. The Mountaineers have played quarterback somewhat by committee, with three seeing time against Pittsburgh, with Nicco Marchiol getting a majority of the snaps. Leipold said Kasnas has to get an idea of each quarterback’s identity.

“You try to get an idea of identity—what they’re going to be with those certain quarterbacks,” Leipold said. “You kind of find out what each one of them does, what type of throws they’re most comfortable making. Some of those will start to show tendencies.”

Preparing for an up-tempo Mountaineers team

West Virginia has played at the second-fasted tempo in college football this season, averaging 19.9 seconds per play. Leipold said Kansas is preparing in practice to go against a fast-paced team.

“We run plays where we rotate the skill positions and keep the linemen right at the line of scrimmage,” Leipold said. “We ran a boatload of plays yesterday in practice, in fact, to the point where we probably have to look and say we could slow this down just a little bit.”

Leipold said he thinks Kansas has a good plan in place for West Virginia’s pace. There are a lot of things you can do in practice, but it comes down to the players communicating well on game day.

“We’ve talked about all the ways through the years of different ways you try to get your defense hustling, moving, reacting,” Leipold said. “It’s still going to come back to having a sense of urgency to get lined up, get the call processed, but more importantly, communicate to one another that we’re all on the same page.”