2022 Recap and looking ahead...

2022 has truly been a turn-around year for KU Football with a winning regular season record and bowl trip against an SEC team. The team ranked in the top 20 this year.

Coach Leipold and his staff have worked near miracles with this team and brought it back to respectability. He and his staff were rewarded with extensions and/or nice raises which should give the program stability and consistency.

There's a lot to celebrate and be thankful for as a Kansas fan. I'm giving a recap of all the positives and then add some thoughts on where we could improve next year.

Positives
* 5-0 through first five games, first time in 13 years
* College GameDay with a big crowd on the hill and great TV numbers for ESPN
* Three (3) Big 12 Conference wins, first time in 14 years
* Offense stats that improved in 2022 vs 2021: scoring +13.4 pts; yards +99.8; first downs +3.3; fewer sacks -0.5; tackle for loss -1.5; QB hurry -0.8
* Defense stats that improved in 2022 vs 2021: total tackles +3.4; solo tackles +4.5; sacks +0.8; tackle for loss +1.2
* Liberty Bowl records set (see tweet from Jordan Guskey at The Topeka Capital-Journal

Things that could use improving next season:
* Special teams
* Placekicker - moves to bolster this position have been made.
* The defense did improve (see Positives above), but it was ranked 119 at the end of regular season(check this???) vs 126 in

Please check out the complete analysis at this link and I would love to hear feedback.

I was so pleasantly surprised by the outcomes of this season for the team and many of the individual players. It looks like many are coming back for next season!

Here's to closing out a great 2022 and may 2023 be a happy, healthy prosperous year for KU Football and all Jayhawk fans.

A bit of clean up on that last bullet point under things that can use improving next season...

Team rankings vary a bit depending on which site you use. This https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaa/fei/overalldef/2021site has KU's defense ranked 126 in 2021 and 107 in 2022.

The official NCAA site has KU's defense ranked 127 in 2022.

Or, you could look at this one which ranks opponents points against as 124th out of 131 teams.

Just looking at them directionally, it's reasonable to say there is room for improvement.