Kansas co-offensive coordinator Eric Kiesau works with quarterback Michael Cummings and receiver Nick Harwell before kickoff against Baylor on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014 in Waco, Texas.

Personnel moves often are tough to make for any coach, but some believe they’re even tougher for an interim guy taking his first stab at the whole head coaching thing.

That has not proven to be true for Kansas University interim coach Clint Bowen. In four games in charge of the KU program Bowen already has changed quarterbacks and now offensive coordinators, making the move to put wide receivers coach Eric Kiesau in the play-caller’s seat instead of O-Line coach John Reagan.

Asked about the move shortly after last week’s loss to Baylor, Bowen was blunt about the reason behind it and said simply, “We want to get to where we’re playing ball in the Big 12 like everyone else.”

Defensively, the Jayhawks are close to that point, but offensively, it’s been a much bigger struggle. The quarterback issues of the past five seasons have been well-documented. The offensive line continues to be a problem. And asking KU to put up points with any kind of consistency that allows the Jayhawks to keep up with some of the fastest and most high-powered offenses in the nation has seemed unfair.

Enter Kiesau, who, according to Bowen, has a little more experience with the run-pass conflict stuff that so many Big 12 offenses seem to have down.

You’ve seen it dozens of times. A quarterback takes the snap in the shotgun and immediately moves to hand the ball to a running back. One problem: He doesn’t always do it. That motion is so often done to get the defense to adjust or move somewhere it doesn’t want to move and that opens a passing lane that may not have been there pre-snap. When done repeatedly — and at a rapid pace — that type of offense puts a ton of pressure on opposing defenses, and even the most talented units eventually break down or at least crack long enough for the offense to hit a big play.

Asked earlier this week what made that style of offense so effective, Bowen’s answer revealed clear frustration from a guy who makes his living as a defensive coordinator.

“Well, it takes all the rules that you ever teach a defensive kid, and uses those rules against him,” Bowen said. “You think, for example, when a tight end releases on a pass route that should equal pass, but it doesn’t. It’s the ball being ran. Guard pulling out on a power play should equal run, but it’s not, it’s a pass. It’s those kind of things. It takes the rules that you teach defensive players and uses it against them.”

Offenses often try to isolate a single player on a defense and put that player in conflict, which essentially means he has to (1) cover too much area (2) cover two areas simultaneously or (3) make a decision between sealing the edge or staying in coverage. Nobody does it better than Baylor, which hit KU for 60 points and nearly 700 yards of total offense last week.

In such a system, the quarterback’s entire focus — at least in those sets — is broken down to that one player and instead of having to read the secondary or an entire defense, he’s reading just one player and that makes the job much easier and increases the odds of running a successful play.

“That’s where coverage parts are becoming more critical,” Bowen said. “You try and take every guy you can and you take him out of that situation to where they’re not a two-way guy. It’s not the old thing of a safety reading a guy and having to fit off of it. He’s either a cover guy or he’s a run fit guy, and it puts you in those dilemmas a little bit, which sometimes creates the isolations and the match-ups that you see on the perimeter.”

Kiesau has experience doing this to defenses from his time as the offensive coordinator at Washington, and he has a quarterback, in junior Michael Cummings, that both he and Bowen believe is smart enough to execute it.

“(Cummings) has a good pre-snap awareness of what defenses are doing,” Bowen said. “It allows him to read a couple different deals. A lot of football now has to do with reading, having a run-pass option on plays, and I think he has the ability to make that decision because you’re usually looking at one defender and deciding what he does — is the pass open or is the run the way to go — and I think he makes those reads pretty efficiently.”

Through hard work, extra hours of studying and dedication that’s second to none, Kiesau said Cummings’ strengths have started to extend beyond the snap.

“I think he’s a reactionary player,” Kiesau said. “He is a kind of see-it and read-it and throw-it and make-it-happen (guy). That’s why I think going fast and going no-huddle kind of gets him out of that over-processing and over-analyzing where he gets himself so locked up. Just let him be free.”

There are obstacles that make it tough for Kiesau to snap his fingers and turn the Jayhawks into the type of offensive juggernaut the rest of the country expects to see when a Big 12 team comes to town. And he’s fully aware of all of them. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. The Jayhawks want to score more points. They want to chew up bigger chunks of yardage, both on single plays and throughout the game. And they want to feel hope when staring up at a 14-0 deficit.

But the one thing that stands out above it all is they want to win.

“We’re just gonna go and try to win this game however we can win it,” Kiesau said of Saturday’s 2:30 p.m. match-up with Iowa State. “Even if it’s 3-0, that’s what we want to do.”