The Oklahoma Sooners Turns Focus To The Kansas Jayhawks

The Oklahoma Sooners are coming off a huge win in the Red River Shootout over the weekend, and their next opponent is the Kansas Jayhawks. To add to the current parity in the Big XII, the Jayhawks held their own against the Oklahoma State Cowboys in what was expected to be a major blowout in Kansas over the weekend, 20-14. Has Charlie Weis actually semi-turned the Jayhawks defense around?

I wouldn’t venture to say they are good, but clearly an improvement has been made – especially if you watched any of the game film from Saturday’s game. The defensive line virtually shut down the Cowboys run game and most notably, Joseph Randle. Randle was averaging around 300 yards per game and was held to only 80 against the Jayhawks. To the Cowboys credit, this isn’t the same offense they had a year ago, but Kansas hasn’t put a decent team on the field since Mark Mangino was run out of town.

Again, the surprising defensive play by the Jayhawks may have to do with a significantly different Cowboys offense – especially one with their freshman QB out and a Redshirt freshman in. That said, the Jayhawks also gave the Kansas State Wildcats a small scare, before Collin Klein and Co. got into their groove in the second half and blew it out.

The Jayhawks have played 3 Big XII opponents so far. Besides being blown out by Kansas State, they held onto TCU until halftime and made the Cowboys work to win. Their only win on the season is over South Dakota State, and are now entering the back half of their schedule with a murder’s row of offensively stout Big XII teams, so things are going to get interesting for Kansas.

And by interesting, I mean not good. Still, improvements are a very small step in the right direction, especially for Kansas.