In your take on KU, I believe you mean to say that they play “vs Texas”, not @

Kansas last year was to me a lot like Rutgers in 2006, only with a QB (Reesing) leading the way instead of a RB (Rice). Of course, Rutgers lost two games to Kansas’ one, and the Scarlet Knights didn’t quite obliterate the non-conference cupcakes to the degree that the Jayhawks did.

One thing they had exactly in common was winning close games. Rutgers in 2006 and Kansas in 2007 both went 3-0 in games decided by a TD or less, and if you count 8-point margins (for 2 point conversions’ sake), KU was 4-1 in those games. Things generally even out from one year to the next, though.

From Steele: over the past six seasons, 49 teams had three net close wins. Of them, 31 were worse the next year, 7 were the same, and 11 were better.

The odds are not on the Jayhawks’ side for matching last season. Given how weak Kansas’ schedule was, especially in comparison to this year’s, getting better or staying the same in 2008 record-wise was already dubious before 2007 even began.

I don’t think Kansas will fall back to 8-5 as Rutgers did, but it will fall off some. KU won’t get as many breaks, and it’s awfully tough to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

I still cannot understand the blind-support that so many people give Colt. You guys just want to ignore the fact that he hasn’t played worth half-of-a-shit since the K-State game in 06. “Oh, it’s a bad o-line. ” “It’s a bad group of receivers.” “It’s a bad running game.” When are the excuses goin to stop? “Oh, his 4 picks weren’t why we lost. It wasn’t his fault.” When is everyone going to get sick of loosing? There is a reason that no other D-1 school wanted him out of high school: HE ISN”T VERY GOOD. Certainly not good enough to lead this team to a Big XII, BCS bowl victory, or MNC.

I can’t wait to see what the next round of excuses is going to be this season, but undoubtedly the gist will be: “It’s everybody’s fault but Colt’s.”

I hope I’m wrong, but we will get any idea pretty quick of exactly how bloody of a season this is going to be for us.

Too early to write him off at this point.

The thing that concerns me about the INT’s is that we really don’t know whether the root cause was:

-Lingering effects from the injuries vs. KSU and A&M
-Poor O-line play
-Getting happy feet and not staying in the pocket long enough
-Poor decision making
-Poor field vison
-Lack of big playmakers at WR
-An offensive game plan so poor that the QB is forced into doing too much on broken plays.

If I had to bet, I’d go with a little bit of all of that, weighted heavily towards the last one. Go back and look at our big gains last year and you’ll see alot of our big gains on broken plays where Colt had to improvise.

with your statement that Virginia Tech was “solid”. I thought Virginia Tech was by far the last impressive BCS team, and that includes Hawai’i. People forget how out-and-out horrible the ACC was last season.
Throw in the fact that Kansas didn’t even belong in the BCS over Missouri, and I just don’t see that BCS bowl win as proof that they’re a good team. I think Kansas had a truly magical season where everything fell into place for them (including a berth in a bowl game they didn’t deserve, and getting to play a pathetic opponent in said bowl game), and I think they’ll come back to Earth – hard – this season.

Regarding Colt McCoy: I remember Greg Davis saying at one point last season that “he was beginning to see things that weren’t there”. I think after all the pre-season attention he received, he felt pressure to improve on what he did his freshman season, and sometimes just forced the action.

A non-sequitir: I’ve mentioned my texas-obsessed friend before. He hates pre-season magazines, thinks they’re all rags that are mostly filled with obsolete information by the time they’re published.
He called me the other day, said he found this preview magazine on texas that “I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty decent.” (Coming from him, that’s high praise.) I asked what preview magazine it was, he said, “The Eyes of Texas”. I laughed, and told him he should check out this site.
I’ve only heard him compliment two previews in my life, and the other one was Phil Steele’s magazine, so a 1000 cocktails to you, sir.

I’m not as worried about all the defensive backs as others seem to be. If Palmer, who is entering his 5th year in the program with a year as a starter and another as a nickelback+Junior Deon Beasley who got a lot of action last year and some the year before both who’ve been tutored by Duane Akina don’t count as experienced DB’s I don’t know what to tell you. Next year our Corners will probably be Curtis Brown and Deon Beasley. Their experience level will be almost exactly the same as Palmer and Beasley heading into this year. This is college football, players leave. It’s not a crazy adjustment.
As for our young safeties, they’ve each had 1 year as redshirts with fall practice, bowl practice (where Earl Thomas was allegedly the best DB on the team), Spring practice, offseason drills, and upcoming fall practice. All of it with Akina and half of it with Muschamp. It’s not a ton of experience but it’s not as if they’re true freshmen. Colt led the team at a more challenging position to learn with that much experience.
Additionally, the team is playing more man defense (as opposed to zone) which requires less experience to play well, and should be backed by a strong pass rush. We may have a bit of a learning curve but the youth of the backfield is very far from a crisis. I expect immediate improvement against the pass.

Perhaps the interception rate can be taken as a measure of overall effectiveness with interceptions being a symptom of poor line play, lack of balance, bad routes, etc. You get more interceptions when you are trying to pick up long yardage due to penalties, ineffective running game, or getting desperate when you are down in the score.