A brand new coach and only one game against a lower tier opponent doesn't tell us much, but there are a couple of things I thought were interesting so far for them at the skill position spots.
Norvell was pretty flexible when he was at Arizona State, adapting his offenses to both QBs that were and weren't runners. He might prefer one type of QB over the other, I am not sure, but he has shown in the past he can put together offenses for both types of QBs. Early on, it looks like his starting QB, a transfer from the JUCO ranks, isn't much of a runner. He has a pretty solid arm, throwing for nearly 300 yards in the first game, but also threw a couple of INTs against SEMO.
Three of the top 4 RBs yardage wise against SEMO were freshman. Patrick Taylor and Darrell Henderson are true freshman and Tony Pollard is a RS FR that plays WR. Doroland Dorceus was the guy they were going to be leaning on in the run game this year, but he struggled against SEMO. The only guy who was solid in the run game was Patrick Taylor, where he had 86 yards rushing on only 7 carries. I am interested to see this guy this weekend, as a recruit he was one of those athletes that many were projecting to many spots. Not your typical build for a RB at 6' 3" 215 lbs, am curious how they will use him.
For WRs, KU will have to keep an eye on Anthony Miller. Had a decent year last year making a couple of starts and hauling in 47 catches for 694 yards, had a solid first game with over 100 yards receiving. After Miller, they passed the ball around to quite a few receivers, with no other receiver catching the ball more than 4 times, but a total of 10 guys caught a pass against SEMO. The TEs weren't used much, two TEs caught a pass each for a total of 17 yards.
On the surface, this looks a little more simpler to defend than what we saw against Ohio, but it is really hard to take anything away from that game against SEMO. Memphis rolled out to a 22 - 0 start in the first quarter and then went into cruise control. Didn't see any of the game, but wouldn't be surprised at all if they kept everything vanilla for that first game and we see a lot of different things not shown in this first game.
Norvell was pretty flexible when he was at Arizona State, adapting his offenses to both QBs that were and weren't runners. He might prefer one type of QB over the other, I am not sure, but he has shown in the past he can put together offenses for both types of QBs. Early on, it looks like his starting QB, a transfer from the JUCO ranks, isn't much of a runner. He has a pretty solid arm, throwing for nearly 300 yards in the first game, but also threw a couple of INTs against SEMO.
Three of the top 4 RBs yardage wise against SEMO were freshman. Patrick Taylor and Darrell Henderson are true freshman and Tony Pollard is a RS FR that plays WR. Doroland Dorceus was the guy they were going to be leaning on in the run game this year, but he struggled against SEMO. The only guy who was solid in the run game was Patrick Taylor, where he had 86 yards rushing on only 7 carries. I am interested to see this guy this weekend, as a recruit he was one of those athletes that many were projecting to many spots. Not your typical build for a RB at 6' 3" 215 lbs, am curious how they will use him.
For WRs, KU will have to keep an eye on Anthony Miller. Had a decent year last year making a couple of starts and hauling in 47 catches for 694 yards, had a solid first game with over 100 yards receiving. After Miller, they passed the ball around to quite a few receivers, with no other receiver catching the ball more than 4 times, but a total of 10 guys caught a pass against SEMO. The TEs weren't used much, two TEs caught a pass each for a total of 17 yards.
On the surface, this looks a little more simpler to defend than what we saw against Ohio, but it is really hard to take anything away from that game against SEMO. Memphis rolled out to a 22 - 0 start in the first quarter and then went into cruise control. Didn't see any of the game, but wouldn't be surprised at all if they kept everything vanilla for that first game and we see a lot of different things not shown in this first game.
