Three Takeaways: Daniels makes Heisman case in big win over Houston.

The Kansas Jayhawks scored a huge win over the Houston Cougars on the road. Here's some quick reactions to the game.

After the Houston Cougars raced out to a quick 14-0 less than five minutes into the game, it was perfectly reasonable to think that this might be a difficult game to watch. But then the Jayhawks went on a 42-7 run to take a commanding lead that they wouldn't give up.

There will be a LOT of things to break down over the course of this week, but here are a couple of immediate takeaways from today's victory:

Jalon Daniels is the best quarterback in the Big 12

I said before the season that I thought Daniels would have a great year, with a chance to put himself solidly in the top half of quarterbacks in the Big 12 conference. But after his impressive performance against Houston, it's hard to argue that anyone in the conference is better. He passed for only 157 yards, but he added another 123 yards on the ground. He passed for three touchdowns and rushed for two more. That gives him 10 total touchdowns on the season.

While Max Duggan has put up impressive numbers in his two games, those have been against some pretty week competition. Daniels has been absolutely electric in his three games so far, and it's easy to argue that he should be one of the top early contenders for the Heisman this season.

Never count this team out

The Jayhawks have gone down 14-0 early in the last two games, but that didn't really matter. In each of those games, Kansas has immediately come alive on offense and stormed back to take the lead. Gone are the days where an early deficit will snowball into a beating. With the calm composure of the Kansas coaching staff, the Jayhawks have yet to truly be out of control, even despite the slow starts.

I don't really want to say that this coaching staff is bad at the scripted beginning part of the game, but it's hard to argue with the results. Offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki seems to thrive on picking up subtle details from the opposing defense to change up his attack, and the Kansas offense is good at incorporating those wrinkles on the fly. And defensive coordinator Brian Borland has excelled at making adjustments after the first few drives in order to counter what the opposing offense has shown.

But I'd much rather have a team that can fight back from an early deficit and adjust throughout the game than one that has to start out well in order to compete.

The defense is just as multi-faceted as the offense

We've talked a lot about just how many options the Jayhawks have on the offense, with 11 different players catching a pass from Daniels tonight, and Kansas having four legitimate running backs that can carry the ball. But the defense has been just as impressive in the selection of weapons available. 

Lonnie Phelps already made his presence known in the first two games, and he had another tackle for loss tonight. Rich Miller has been a tackling machine across the defense in every game this year. Cobee Bryant has had big plays in both games prior to tonight, with Eriq Gilyard also snagging an interception in the opener.

And tonight, Kenny Logan got an interception. Jereme Robinson got a strip sack that turned into a turnover. Craig Young, Taiwan Berryhill and Caleb Sampson all came up with sacks at important moments. And outside of the first few minutes of the game, there wasn't really a consistent spot that Houston could attack to get chunks of yards.

The biggest characteristic of this team is that they keep getting big plays, but it's almost impossible to know who is going to be the one to make it. The only exception is Jalon Daniels, who has pretty quickly vaulted himself into a legitimate Heisman contender. But whenever anyone else gets taken away, another player steps up to fill the void.

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