Kansas University’s football team plans to solve the noticeable pass-dropping hiccup last week in an innovative way – by doing nothing.

That’s the strategy to overcome an uncharacteristic case of bad hands in last week’s 45-13 victory over Toledo. The way the coaches see it, they already do enough and have seen enough positive results to know that any extra attention put to it wouldn’t be especially beneficial.

“It was just one of those days,” wide receivers coach Tim Beck said. “If A-Rod goes 0-for-3, you don’t bench him.”

No, Alex Rodriguez has proven his worth and certainly can survive a bad day (even if New York fans think he’s a bum). The same goes for KU’s receivers, who were impressive in the Jayhawks’ first two games, and even productive last week despite an alarming number of dropped passes early in the game.

KU senior Marcus Henry, who dropped several balls but did have seven catches for 133 yards against Toledo, said the receivers hadn’t been overworked to try to cure the bad case of drop-itis this week. They already do plenty to soften the hands.

“It’s just been a normal week,” Henry said. “Maybe on our own, the receivers have concentrated a little more on the jug machine or something like that. But all in all, it’s just been normal.”

KU coach Mark Mangino said he wants it that way.

“Catching the football and protecting the football is the same as teaching a guy to block, teaching someone to tackle, someone to play man coverage, zone coverage : it’s all the same,” Mangino said. “Catching can be learned. I think we’ve done a really good job with it. I would say there were instances where we tried to run up field, and our feet went before we caught the ball. Some of them were defended pretty well and we didn’t stay with the ball.”

Those are going to happen occasionally, he says. The one that irked Mangino was a pass to Henry in the end zone, where KU’s 6-foot-4 senior caught the ball in a cradle not expecting a defender to be right on him.

“He didn’t realize there was a safety coming over,” Mangino said. “He thought he was going to catch it and step out the back of the end zone, and here was a guy right on top of him and knocked the ball loose.”

KU’s coaches certainly realize the impact of a catch-that-wasn’t. (“It kills your mojo,” Beck says). But KU is heading into Saturday’s game against Florida International hoping last week’s minor letdown was just a contagious problem that went away.

“I’m not overly concerned about it,” Mangino said. “We do so much work with it, we’ll be fine.”