Kansas coach Turner Gill, right, quarterback Jordan Webb, center, and Joe Dailey, KU’s on-campus recruiting coordinator, come together on the sideline during Kansas’ Sept. 4 game against North Dakota State. Dailey had been signalling in plays on the sideline for KU’s first two games, a violation of NCAA rules the Jayhawks rectified in their third game.

Captains were elected in late August, but the Kansas University football team still is searching for leadership.

Six games into Turner Gill’s first season at Kansas, the Jayhawks are 2-4 overall, 0-2 in Big 12 play and, worse than either of those numbers, inconsistent on a regular basis.

Effort, talent, coaching and experience all have been called into question during the Jayhawks’ recent struggles, but Gill said Friday, a day after KU’s 59-7 home loss to Kansas State, that his team still was missing that one definitive voice of leadership.

“I think there’s a couple of guys, but I think right now, guys are still kind of searching for (leaders) and also coming to us as coaches,” Gill said. “I think the captains, in general, are those guys that (the rest of the team) is going to, whether it’s on the field things or off the field things.”

That seems like a logical place to start. However, of KU’s five captains — seniors Sal Capra, Chris Harris, Jake Laptad, Angus Quigley and Justin Springer — only three have consistently played the same position this season. Capra, who was injured during the loss to KSU and is listed as questionable for next week, has moved around on the offensive line while the coaching staff has continued to seek chemistry up front. And Quigley, the opening day starting running back, is just now back to 100 percent health and has seen youngsters James Sims and Deshaun Sands get the majority of the carries during the first six games.

That leaves Harris, Laptad and Springer in the obvious position to lead, but comments from all three throughout the season have indicated that the first-year captains aren’t quite sure about what makes this team tick. Take the following comments from Harris, which came after Thursday’s loss, as an example.

“We need to figure out a way, when we do get down, to bounce back,” he said. “We just have to start from scratch and figure out how to get another win.”

Though Harris’ comments ring true, they’re not exactly the type that instill a lot of confidence in a young team struggling to find its way.

Ask the players who’s to blame for the recent back-to-back blowout defeats and an unimaginable loss to North Dakota State in the season opener and they’ll put the blame on themselves. As junior wideout Daymond Patterson put it: “There’s not too much the coaches can do when you work on something every day and then (we) go out and do the opposite when the game comes. We just have to take it up with ourselves as players and keep on working.”

Ask the KU coaches which side is culpable, and they’ll say they are, pointing to their experience.

So who’s right?

“It’s absolutely both,” Gill said. “There’s no question. We, as coaches, gotta teach, we gotta develop and we gotta prepare ’em. And then, as we all know, the ultimate deal is the players are the ones on the football field that have to go out and execute the plan. So it’s both. We’re all in this together, and we’re both taking responsibility.”

The onus of leadership falls on the shoulders of more than the captains and the coaching staff, though. And, if there’s one good sign, it’s that many of the Jayhawks are aware of that.

“We’ve got leaders on this team that can pull this team together,” junior linebacker Steven Johnson said. “There’s even people on the scout team saying stuff. There are people on this team that want to win, people that care. So we’re going to be fine.”

Quarterback Jordan Webb, a red-shirt freshman, also knows his place in all of this. After Thursday’s debacle, a clearly bothered Webb said the only thing he and his teammates could do was continue to plug away.

“No one’s gonna pack it in,” Webb said. “We work all year round, a lot of people don’t realize that. We put a lot of time and effort into this and no one’s gonna give up. There’s nothing that I have to do extra. I’m going to still be the leader I am. I might up it a little bit, but it’s not because I’m afraid anybody’s gonna pack it in. It’s just because we gotta get better.”

Added Gill: “There’s work to be done, no question about that.”