Halftime Musings: Kansas trails Texas 13-7 despite multiple errors

The Jayhawk defense has kept the visitors in the game despite a sputtering offense.

Today's game was supposed to be a battle of heavyweights: the electric Kansas Jayhawks offense against the surprising Texas Longhorns defense. Unfortunately, the news just before kickoff was that Jalon Daniels was a late scratch, as he aggravated his back injury this morning.

Instead, it has been a game that is frustrating for both teams, with enough mistakes to get fired up at halftime but enough big plays to feel like it can be fixed in the second half. So let's take a look at what we learned in that first half.

Defensive Flex

Once again, the bend but don't break defense showed that they aren't being taken seriously enough. Texas racked up a big number of yards in the first half, but seemed to find their footing more and more as the half went on. And the big stands in the red zone, forcing three field goal attempts (including a missed 50-yarder), have turned this into a disappointing effort by the Texas offense.

Cornell Wheeler was able to stop a threat at the end of the half with the first interception of the season for Quinn Ewers. This defense has to be feeling pretty good overall, with enough to be upset about to come out hungry in the second half.

Poor Decision Making

The loss of Daniels is more evident here than anywhere else. The pitches/handoffs in the triple option have looked tentative at best from Jason Bean. His throws are off target, and it still hasn't looked like he has settled in at all. Add in a horrible decision on a 3rd down run, where he cut laterally instead of running into contact for the first down, and it's clear he needs to figure some things out at half.

It doesn't seem likely that Daniels is going to be available for the second half, so Kansas will need Bean to come out strong.

Special Teams are no longer a worry.

It's been a long time since I've been able to type that sentence. The kicking game has been a huge concern for Kansas for several years. The punting game was a bit uneven this year so far. And the return game left something to be desired. But I have no worries about the kicking specialists now. Seth Keller has been phenomenal in prior games, and made his only attempt on an extra point in the first half. But Damon Greaves has averaged 44 yards on his 4 punts, with three of them downed inside the 20. You can't ask for him to do any better, especially with the amount of hangtime that prevents any decent returns.

We are past the point of pointing blame at the special teams for losses.