photo by: AP Photo/Tyler Tate

Utah linebacker Johnathan Hall, left, and safety Rabbit Evans, right, make a stop on fourth down at the goal line against Kansas quarterback Isaiah Marshall, center, during the second half of an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, in Salt Lake City.

SALT LAKE CITY — Early in the second half, it looked like Kansas might be able to keep pace with No. 12 Utah in a shootout.

That would have been almost unthinkable entering Saturday given the inconsistency of the Jayhawks’ offense, but quarterback Isaiah Marshall had hit his stride, and if the KU defense could have forced another turnover or two like it did early on, who knows what might have happened?

Instead, pesky goal-line execution got in the way.

Trailing 34-24 midway through the fourth quarter, KU had a chance to put game pressure back on the Utes after Marshall’s bombs to Nahzae Cox and Leyton Cure netted 71 yards. But after an ill-timed false start by Connor Stroh and one potential touchdown for Carson Bruhn that was reversed upon a review, the Jayhawks faced fourth-and-goal at the 1-yard line.

Associate head coach Andy Kotelnicki certainly gave Utah something interesting to look at. The Jayhawks lined up in the pistol with Bruhn at tight end, Jailen Butler at fullback and Jalen Dupree at tailback, but an unusual cluster of backup quarterback Chase Jenkins and rotational guard Tavake Tuikolovatu tight to the right. Tuikolovatu came in motion at the snap, preparing to lay the lumber on any Ute who got in his way.

Instead…

Utah defensive tackle Pupu Sepulona was already across the line of scrimmage by the time Marshall reached his option mesh point with Dupree. As the quarterback said postgame, it became clear he would need to take it himself: “I tried to pull it and make a play, but their DB played it very well,” he said.

Tuikolovatu did take care of linebacker Trey Reynolds, but both safety Rabbit Evans and linebacker Johnathan Hall were locked in on Marshall and didn’t seem to fear a possible handoff to Dupree. They got him for no gain and a turnover on downs. Three plays later, Wayshawn Parker ran for a 90-yard touchdown, and that was the ball game.

“We thought we were going to catch (them),” head coach Lance Leipold said. “They had good leverage out there. And again we didn’t run the ball real well inside, so to try something up inside just probably something Andy didn’t feel like was comfortable doing. We thought we had the right call. Isaiah tried to make some things happen but it wasn’t to be.”

Kotelnicki received his fair share of scrutiny for short-yardage choices during his first KU tenure, but it’s hard to take issue with a read option at the goal line. It was pretty apparently the sort of play on which KU missed the power back it thought it was going to have at its disposal this year and now doesn’t, 6-foot-1, 230-pound Syracuse transfer Yasin Willis.

Whatever the case, it was emblematic of a team that has found itself a few plays away from more than a few wins in recent years — “That’s kind of been our story at times, unfortunately,” Leipold said postgame — and probably deserved better than a 17-point loss from Saturday night. But it was a loss all the same.

“I feel like that was the game changer,” Marshall said. “I feel like if we score there, then that brings momentum to the defense and just little things like that.”

Here’s more of what stood from Saturday’s loss, which dropped KU to 2-3 on the year entering a pivotal road matchup with rival Kansas State.

• While Kotelnicki didn’t get what he wanted with that fourth-and-goal call, he deserves credit for a clever concept with similar personnel on a third-and-goal earlier when the Jayhawks were really desperate for a touchdown at the start of the second quarter.

KU lined up late in the play clock — not sure if it technically met the description of a so-called “sugar huddle,” but it might have been close — and went trips right with a cluster of three big bodies: Butler and Bruhn on either side of Tuikolovatu. The Utah defensive backs didn’t have time to react (unlike on the play later in the game) to what the Jayhawks were throwing at them. Bruhn didn’t even really connect on his block on Jackson Bennee, but Dylan Edwards made Bennee miss for the score. It was a great example of using creativity to put players in the best positions to succeed, which is kind of Kotelnicki’s whole ethos.

• Leipold said postgame that KU worked as hard as it could on crowd noise during the week. It’s hard to argue with that given that we media members heard the Utah fight song, “All I Do Is Win,” “Seven Nation Army” and the like blaring from the David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium speakers while the Jayhawks practiced on Tuesday.

But some of the false starts that the Jayhawks committed regardless were absolutely killer. The aforementioned penalty on Stroh was brutal — if not for it, KU might not have faced the fourth-and-goal situation in the first place. He had made another earlier that forced the Jayhawks to punt instead of going for it on fourth down when they were driving to take the lead after halftime. (That’s to say nothing of the ineligible man downfield penalty on Amir Herring that wiped out a fourth-down conversion moments before that.) And DeAndre Harper false-started in a goal-to-go situation, too, though that one didn’t turn out quite as costly.

“Environments like this, it happens,” Leipold said of Rice-Eccles Stadium, which announced its 99th straight sellout on Saturday.

• Big 12 officiating can be painful to watch, and this game did not exactly feature a scintillating display. Each team received 10 penalties — KU’s for 90 yards, Utah’s for 92 — and had plenty to be annoyed about along the way. One particularly striking moment came when the refs threw four flags on the field and called a total of three penalties, including one on a misidentified player.

Leipold, for his part, might have been most annoyed early in the second quarter, when cornerback Syeed Gibbs got flagged twice for pass interference in the span of four plays on underthrown balls from Utah quarterback Devon Dampier.

“I thought our guys were playing the ball,” Leipold said. “As we know, those are really hard calls. As they go through, I’m sure as some of them went the second half our direction, Coach Scalley’s probably not really happy on that side on some of those.”

Gibbs couldn’t have been happy after he got called for one penalty in coverage on Ricky Johnson and then another in the end zone against Creed Whittemore — and got hurt and had to limp off the field after the latter.

“I thought Syeed, especially on the one at the goal line, I thought he was turning to play the ball as it was coming back,” Leipold said. “The other one I just thought was uncatchable because it was so short, and they felt that he could still get back and get it.”

Making matters worse for the Jayhawks, Leipold himself was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct after the Whittemore play, apparently because an official thought he was going out on the field to complain about the call.

“I was walking out to our injured player, and he was directly in my line, and he thought I was coming after him, so he flagged me,” Leipold said. “And it’s unfortunate because Syeed’s down on the ground and I’m looking right to the official as I’m walking out there and he starts reaching, and that’s when I point out, like, I’m pointing at our player behind him.”

It was all unfortunate for KU as those 37 penalty yards accounted for about half a Utah drive and Dampier threw a touchdown pass to Noah Bennee on the next play.

• Kotelnicki said this week that Cam Pickett should be a “main weapon” for the Jayhawks. That had become a bit harder to envision after he missed most of the early part of the year due to a late-summer injury and then didn’t look totally himself in his return to significant action against Middle Tennessee.

Well, it is no longer hard to envision. Pickett posted the best performance of his career — Ball State or KU — on Saturday. Marshall looked his way 14 times and he made eight catches for 134 yards.

“It was big,” Leipold said. “Last week, he started to show that, but for him to have that type of game, that’s what we had hoped for in those first few games when he wasn’t available.”

He and Nik McMillan took repeated advantage of what has historically been a pretty stingy Utah secondary. Pickett still hasn’t been quite as effective on the catch-and-run quick passes as on the deeper routes over the middle, but even in a losing effort, he gave defensive coordinators a lot to think about for the rest of this year.

• I’m not sure enough can be said about the continued excellence of Leroy Harris III and David Santiago. The KU defensive ends starred yet again, even on what was by Santiago’s own admission a lackluster day for the defense: “I think there’s a lot of room for improvement,” he said. “Didn’t play our best game. We had moments where we played really well, but overall, just a lot of stuff to improve.”

It’s hard to imagine how those two might play much better than they did on Saturday, especially early on when they were basically the only players sustaining KU as its offense struggled.

Harris’ sack numbers have thus far this year not reflected the threat he poses to opposing quarterbacks; this time he picked up two sacks and now has three on the year. In all, he recorded seven tackles, including 2.5 for loss. And he deflected an extra point after having blocked a field goal against Missouri. Santiago, meanwhile, had five tackles, including a brilliant goal-line tackle for loss and a pass breakup, but perhaps most notably lined up inside and blew past Utah guard Kelvin Obot for a strip-sack that set up the Edwards touchdown.

• This is a KU defense that desperately needs to create turnovers, especially when it doesn’t have its best stuff and isn’t holding opponents to the meager yardage totals of Arizona State and Middle Tennessee. To that end, it was encouraging to see Jalen Todd, who has long been a steady presence as KU’s top corner, rewarded with his first career interception — which was also the Jayhawks’ first of the year and the first by any KU cornerback since Nov. 16, 2024 (against BYU, also in the state of Utah).

According to Pro Football Focus, Todd was targeted four times on the day and allowed just two catches for 15 yards. It was not a bad day for the KU secondary all things considered, though not quite up to the standard they had established in those aforementioned two prior games.

• It was always going to be interesting to see how quickly KU would incorporate the pair of players it acquired via injunction. Running back Chase Belcher, formerly of Kennesaw State, and defensive tackle Clifton Thompson, formerly of Central Connecticut State, were not available to play against MTSU, but they traveled, dressed and, in Thompson’s case, entered the game against Utah.

When the Jayhawks added the pair of Monroe County, Indiana, plaintiffs, their need at running back seemed pressing enough that Belcher might see immediate action — and Kotelnicki indicated he wouldn’t hesitate to throw him in whenever he was eligible. But Edwards and Dupree were the only running backs to appear on Saturday. Meanwhile, D.K. McDonald and Jim Panagos clearly liked enough of what they saw from Thompson to give the nose tackle 22 snaps.

On his first play, he worked through a block and tackled Parker for no gain, something few Jayhawks could do on Saturday. He assisted on one other tackle on the day. He may not be Tre’von McAlpine, but KU clearly thinks it has something valuable in Thompson, which is impressive considering that not long ago he was working as an Ivy League graduate assistant.

• So it’s Sunflower Showdown week now, time for the sort of game in which KU fans now resignedly await some blunder that will enter rivalry lore along with the likes of Rich Miller’s dropped interception in 2023 or Jameel Croft Jr.’s ill-fated kickoff return in 2024. Those sort of plays are magnified when they contribute to what is now a 17-year streak in Kansas State’s favor.

K-State looks vulnerable after losing in resounding fashion at home to Houston, but of course it looked vulnerable last year and then came to Lawrence and blew out the Jayhawks regardless. This year’s contest, the first pitting Leipold against Collin Klein, will take place at Bill Snyder Family Stadium on Saturday at 11 a.m.

Maybe no postgame comment on Saturday summed up the Jayhawks’ situation as much as Pickett’s remark that “it’s enough of being close and we got to actually go do it now.” KU simply has not come out on top in big moments in the last several seasons, but especially since the start of 2025. At some point the Jayhawks need to reverse that trend.

This might be the best possible game in which to do so, because 3-3 with a streak-breaking win would look a lot better than 2-4 with a streak old enough to vote. The fact is that KU’s schedule gets a bit easier down the stretch; at the risk of belaboring the point, though, it just needs to be a sufficiently confident team to take advantage of those opportunities.