Losing sucks. Everyone will tell ya that. Whether you lose by one point or a million — no matter the sport — it’s no fun to be on the losing side of any game, or, as fans, to show up and watch your team lose.
So, yeah, it’s OK if you walked away from Friday’s 38-21 Kansas football loss to 23rd-ranked Missouri a little pissed off that the Jayhawks couldn’t find a way to get it done.
You’ve probably heard the stats by now. The loss dropped KU coach Lance Leipold to 0-7 in KU’s biggest rivalry games, with five losses in five seasons to K-State and losses to the bitter Border War rival Tigers in each of the past two years.
Even just sprinkling in one win in that time — and there were at least two or three games in there that Kansas could have won, last night included — would’ve done wonders for the fans’ perception of where this program is at today and where it’s headed.
But losing to your rivals magnifies the pain and frustration of any loss, so things are pretty charged up today around message boards, social media and conversations between friends.
You know where they’re not? Inside the KU facility, where the Jayhawks continue to believe in themselves and what they’re capable of doing this season.
That’s one of my 2 big takeaways from the Week 2 loss and we’ll get into both of them here.
Here’s a deeper look at those two takeaways.
1 - Although they were clearly disappointed by Friday’s loss and several aspects of how they played, this group very much still sounded like a team that believes good things are ahead.
You don’t have to like it, accept it or agree with it. But the players do and that’s significant, at least for now.
Linebacker Trey Lathan talked about bouncing back next week vs. Arizona State, focusing on the Big 12 schedule and making some noise in the conference.
Defensive end Leroy Harris III, who could’ve been a takeaway unto himself for the monster effort he put up against Mizzou, talked repeatedly about how they think they’re close and will be in good shape if they just get a couple of things fixed. Both of them, along with their head coach, pointed to KU still having 10 games to play, including 9 Big 12 games.
The message wasn’t so much that people should forget about this one and move on from it quickly. Instead, it was that the Jayhawks themselves will move on quickly and get ready to see if they can make a run in the Big 12.
There aren’t many people outside of the KU facility who believe that’s what’s coming, but these guys definitely do. It’s not an act. It’s not scripted answers to promote positivity. And, even though it might sound like it to many of you, it’s not the same old, same old.
I think that’s significant and I think it gives them a chance. They have to back up the thought with action, execution and performance. Put another way, they’ve gotta win for any of their words to matter.
But make no mistake about it, they matter to them. And that’s not nothing. At least not at this point.
2 - It was a rough night for starting quarterback Zeke Marshall. No one, including him, will dispute that. But, boy, did it come at a bad time.
Not only was his 13-for-30, 3-turnover performance against KU’s biggest rival tough to watch, but it also came in his second game as a starter, which has to bring into play questions about how he’ll handle it moving forward.
To his credit, he seemed pretty composed while talking to the media after the loss. He admitted his mistakes, took a lot of the blame for what went wrong and acknowledged that he can’t play like that if KU hopes to win.
So, the understanding is there. But the play to match it needs to catch up quickly or this could be a long, tough season.
As you know, Marshall looked solid in KU’s Week 1 win against Long Island. But, as almost everyone appropriately pointed out then, that LIU defense was by no means the best representation of the strong defenses Marshall and the Jayhawks will face the rest of the way. Not in the secondary and not in the trenches.
And that might’ve been the toughest part of the Week 2 loss. It wasn’t that he didn’t have opportunities to make plays. He just didn’t make them.
He did make a couple and KU led 14-7 after his first TD pass and trailed just 28-21 after his second. So, he was battling. But he also missed several open receivers — both high and short — and struggled to hit throws on the move.
You don’t always have time to plant, step and throw. But he did have that time more than he showed on Friday night and a lot of his 17 incompletions were pretty off as a result.
After the loss, Leipold said Marshall got hit on the arm early and the effects kind of stuck with him. That explains some of it, but not all of it.
If there’s a silver lining here — and, yes, I know many of you absolutely hate those — it’s that Marshall is still a QB who has made just 2 starts in his college career and is slated for No. 3 next weekend.
When you’re that green, lessons tend to come in huge chunks and it’s more than reasonable and completely fair to expect Marshall to be better each time out from here on out, no matter who the Jayhawks are playing.
If he’s not, or, worse yet, if he regresses, that’s when you’ve got big problems, problems that could be compounded significantly if backup Cole Ballard isn’t an option for the Jayhawks to turn to after he injured his shoulder on Friday night and was seen wearing a sling toward the end of the game.
Still too early to know exactly where things stand with Ballard. And Marshall remains this team’s QB1. His play moving forward and how he bounces back from a rough night against the Tigers will determine how long it stays that way.
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