Kansas spent Saturday afternoon teetering on the edge, and then Blake Herold shoved the whole thing back in the Jayhawks’ favor.
With Baylor lining up for what looked like a game-winning field goal and 22 seconds left, the Kansas defensive tackle got enough of Rhett Armstrong’s kick to turn a potential heartbreak into a 25-24 Jayhawks victory. It was the third time Armstrong had tried to beat KU with a low shot, and this time Herold finally got the stop.
“You can hear the double-thunk, the hitting of the foot on the ball,” head coach Lance Leipold said, “and then bam, a hand up there pretty quick.”
For Herold, the block carried some real memory with it. Baylor had already used him as a kind of unintended obstacle twice before on extra-point tries, both times sending the ball off his hands and face before it still somehow sneaked through the uprights. He said those earlier plays were “demoralizing,” and they were very much on his mind as he took his place again.
“I definitely thought about those two,” the redshirt junior defensive tackle said. “They kind of stung a little bit for sure.
Coach (Aaron) Miller, our (assistant) special teams coach, he knew we were due for one. So the first two kind of hitting off the helmet kind of (stung) a little bit, but finally getting that third one is where everything paid off.”
Herold said Kansas had prepared for a low kick, but he also put the play in simple terms.
“honestly it just comes down to effort and attitude, kind of just selling out for those two seconds that that play is going on.”
What followed was pure release. Austin Alexander came up with the ball on the sideline, players flooded the field, and KU had the kind of ending it has rarely gotten in recent years, aside from a road win over UCF last season. Herold called it an “electricity kind of feeling.”
Leipold, though, wasn’t ready to exhale immediately. He said the first thing that hit him was the possibility of a celebration mistake.
“The next thing I’m always worried about as soon as that happens is the chaos that ensues on the field,” he said. “I’m always worried about a celebration penalty, or something else that’s going to go with it.”
No flag came. Isaiah Marshall took the kneel-downs, the game ended, and Kansas secured its first conference victory of the year.
The escape came after a game in which the Jayhawks generally looked like the better team. They outgained Baylor, controlled the line of scrimmage and played cleaner football, with just three penalties compared to 12 for the Bears. Still, an improbable 34-yard catch by Baylor’s Gavin Freeman left the outcome hanging in the balance until the final sequence.
Lathan summed up the special teams plan simply.
“Our special teams coach said he’s going to give us a few low kicks,” he said. “He went out there and he gave us three low kicks.
We had our hands on all three of them. Two of them went in, but the one that really mattered, it got deflected.”
The sideline reaction told its own story. Isaiah Marshall found the strength to watch the final play.
Backup Cole Ballard could not. Middle linebacker Trey Lathan and cornerback Elijah Cannon stood together praying for deliverance.
And when the block came through, Lathan put it this way: “And when you pray,” Lathan said, “God answers.”
Running back Dylan Edwards said the emotional payoff hit everybody.
“The energy was just up for everybody and we were just all happy,” Edwards said. “Just winning a game like that, we needed that one.”
Leipold said he was “extremely proud” of how his team reacted afterward and called it a day the Jayhawks can use moving forward.
“It’s a good day,” he said, “and something that hopefully we can build momentum off of.”
Kansas now heads to Fort Worth, Texas, for a meeting with TCU, which had its own late-game collapse on Saturday. Quarterback Jaden Craig fumbled with the Horned Frogs 14 yards from a go-ahead touchdown, and TCU instead fell 24-20 to West Virginia. That leaves both teams at 3-4 overall and 1-3 in Big 12 play entering next weekend.
“Going out there, being able to get a win, it was really boosting us up to go get a win on the road,” Lathan said.
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