CHAMPAIGN, Illinois – The Jayhawks will not return home from their road game against Illinois on Saturday with the success they had hoped for.
The three interceptions thrown by redshirt junior quarterback Jalon Daniels hurt, as did the general inability to move the ball through the air as effectively as they could. Illinois also returned one of those interceptions for a touchdown, further complicating a night where Kansas’ defense was successful for much of the game. Senior running back Devin Neal said after the game that his Jayhawks couldn’t match the Fighting Illini’s intensity as Illinois looked to make up for a loss last year in Lawrence.
But while Kansas head coach Lance Leipold acknowledged the areas where his team fell short after the 23-17 loss, he tried to put the situation in perspective with so much of the season still to be played. He said while people may want to talk about games that aren’t even on the Jayhawks’ schedule yet, it’s time to “see what we’re made of.” They have a game against UNLV next Friday, and Big 12 Conference play follows after that.
Assessing the Kansas football team’s performance in Week 2 in the 23-17 loss to Illinois
Result Kansas Football vs. Illinois: Jayhawks lose to Fighting Illini 23:17
“If everybody thinks our season and our goals and everything else is gone, they’re very wrong,” Leipold said. “You saw it — I mean, how many games today ended like that? How many games last week? We’re just getting into the season, guys. So that’s the way it is.”
Leipold continued: “But we’ll see what kind of team we are, what kind of determination we have, what kind of leadership we have, from the head coach down.”
Neal wouldn’t go so far as to say that he and his teammates came in overconfident or complacent, but he did note that he felt they needed a game like this in some ways. It can serve as a motivational moment. It reminds us how important it is to fight in every single game.
Despite the struggles 20th-ranked Kansas (1-1) faced, it still had a chance to beat Illinois (2-0). The Jayhawks took a 17-13 lead into the fourth quarter after Daniels threw his second touchdown pass of the game. Their offense just wasn’t good enough when the Fighting Illini reclaimed the lead, and their defense couldn’t find the same success it had in the first three quarters.
Daniels said when Kansas had a chance to punt the ball for the game-winning point in the final minute of the fourth quarter, he had complete faith in the Jayhawks. But they failed in the final seconds when the Fighting Illini prevented him from getting the ball into the end zone by forcing a fumble and then recovering it. That meant Kansas would lose both the game and the turnover battle, with the latter ending 4-1.
“We were tested today,” KU redshirt senior linebacker Cornell Wheeler said when asked if “frustrated” was an apt description of his postgame feelings about the loss. “It was very humbling. We took a loss early. It was humbling to get better. We’ll be back next week, we’ll have a short break, so we just want to get back in the film room and get better.”
Daniels said the first interception he threw, he thought he could get the pass over the defender and the defender just made a great play. The second one, he tried to get the ball past a defender and a defender behind him made a play. The third interception, he thought Illinois disguised the coverage well and he didn’t make the throw well enough.
Just like his teammates, Daniels will study the film and own up to his mistakes. Personally, he wishes he could get some throws back, and he noted that he wasn’t good enough to put his team in a good position. But it’s not like he’s lost the trust of teammates like Neal or Wheeler or the support of his head coach, and even Illinois head coach Bret Bielema took the time after the game to give Daniels a message on the field.
“He said, ‘You’re a damn good football player, so make sure you’re in a position to win every single game the rest of the year,'” Daniels recalled. “‘You’re a damn good football player, so just keep going out there and having fun.'”
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas athletics for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the 2022 National Sports Media Association Sportswriter of the Year for the state of Kansas. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
