Most Crucial Jayhawks 2016: No. 6 – QB Ryan Willis
photo by: Nick Krug
Kansas quarterback Ryan Willis (13) throws during the first quarter on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2015 at Memorial Stadium.
More than 14,000 high schools in the United States field football teams, yet only one of those schools can lay claim to having a candidate for the Kansas starting quarterback job.
Bishop Miege, located in Roeland Park, also furnished KU with an offensive line coach for two years until Tim Grunhard decided he didn’t want to miss his son’s high school years and resigned.
Montell Cozart, a 2013 Miege graduate, appeared at No. 9 on our list of most crucial Jayhawks. Ryan Willis, who graduated from Miege in 2015, checks in at No. 6 on our countdown.
Reminder: This is not a list of the 25 best players on this year’s team.
This is a list of the 25 players who need to have strong seasons in order for the Jayhawks to have a chance to compete, which they failed to do during an 0-12 2015 season.
Matt Tait and and I collaborated on the list for the third consecutive season.
Track it every weekday at KUsports.com, where we’ll unveil one crucial Jayhawk at a time in reverse order. If you missed any, click the links at the bottom of each entry to get up to speed.
6. Ryan Willis, Soph. Quarterback
Easier tasks exist than evaluating a true freshman quarterback playing behind a consistently overmatched offensive line in one of the nation’s top college football conferences.
Statistically, Willis didn’t fare particularly well. He completed 52.1 percent of his passes for just 5.46 yards per attempt and threw nine touchdown pases and 10 interceptions in 315 attempts. Cozart completed 62.9 percent with a 7.16 average, two touchdowns and one interception in 105 attempts before a season-ending injury.
Since Cozart has so much more experience, it stands to reason Willis will improve more in his second year in the program than Cozart in his fourth. Not so fast. Willis suffered a wrist injury playing pick-up basketball and couldn’t throw during spring football.
Second-year head coach David Beaty, who has taken on the responsibilities of offensive coordinator, has a tough decision on his hands. The fact that Willis and Cozart have such different strengths and weaknesses doesn’t make it any easier.
Willis’ greatest strength is in throwing accurate medium-to-long passes, which happens to be Cozart’s greatest weakness because of a tendency to overthrow receivers. Speed ranks as Cozart’s greatest strength, which happens to match up with Willis’ most glaring weakness.
Defenses facing a Cozart-led offense can crowd the field without fearing he will burn them with accurate down-field throws. Defenses facing an offense directed by Willis can worry about one fewer helmet in the running game because he is no threat with his feet. Willis can stretch a defense with the threat of the long ball.
Cozart, who as a freshman shied from contact to the point of running out of bounds one yard short of the first-down marker, has made big strides in that area. Willis took vicious hits last season and hung though throughout.
Because Cozart is such a known and Willis in theory has more untapped potential, the majority of the fan base will take it as an encouraging sign if Willis wins the job, but Beaty’s decision won’t be based on popularity, rather on which quarterback he thinks can generate more points for an offense that ranked 123rd among 128 FBS schools in 2015.
Even without much protection and a shortage of speedy targets, Willis showed he is more capable of scoring through the air than Cozart. Willis threw a touchdown once every 35 passes, not a good number. Cozart threw one every 52.5 passes, worse.
Which quarterback can more effectively get the ball in the hands of Texas A&M transfer wide receiver LaQuvionte Gonzalez will be a factor.
Top 25 Most Crucial Jayhawks of 2016: