Week Two Jayhawk Spotlight: The Defense

Every week we spotlight something positive from the prior Kansas game. Against Illinois, it was hard to come by, at least on the offensive side of the ball where the Jayhawks continually shot themselves in the foot as they threw away golden opportunities to go to 2-0 on the season. So, we head to the defense, and after careful consideration, the whole unit gets the spotlight.

When you give up one offensive touchdown to a P4 school and lose, two things are probably true. One, your offense didn’t do enough. Two, your defense played well. You’ve probably heard enough about the former in the last several days, so let’s focus on the latter.

Let’s start with a few individual efforts that warrant our spotlight. For one, Marvin Grant was all over the place for the defensive Jayhawks. The senior from Detroit had nine tackles in the game, including seven solo take downs. Grant also got a sack in the first half and, after a solid junior campaign, is showing everyone what an important asset he is to the Kansas defense in his senior season.

Cornell Wheeler was also a player who came into the 2024 season with a lot of expectations and to say that he is fulfilling those expectations is an understatement. The linebacker from Michigan recorded eight tackles against Illinois, including five of the solo variety. But the most impressive part of Wheeler’s stat line is the three tackles for loss. The rest of the team tallied six. The bruising hit that caused an Illinois fumble early on set the tone defensively for Kansas. Unfortunately, the offense wasn’t up to the task.

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Jalen Dye, Mello Dotson and JB Brown both had five tackles each, while Dylan Wudke, OJ Burroughs, and Cobee Bryant each had three tackles, giving KU fans hope that the defense will be able to bail out the offense when things aren’t clicking.

Sure, Illinois missed a few golden opportunities to make the spread slightly bigger, but the same can be said about KU who had touchdowns taken away by penalties. The less said about the turnovers the better.

But despite all the reasons to mope, the Kansas defense certainly played well enough to get the win. If the offense (and play calling) can regain its traction in the weeks to come, Kansas should be in fine shape.