After a frustrating loss to TCU, Kansas turns back to Big 12 play Saturday with UCF coming to town. The Jayhawks are 3-5 and sitting 14th in the conference standings, while the Knights arrive at 4-4 and in eighth place.
If Kansas wants to avoid another rough afternoon, these are the UCF names that can swing the game.
At quarterback, UCF has two options in Keyone Jenkins and Alonza Barnett III. Jenkins spent his first three seasons at Florida International and set a career high with 22 touchdown passes in 2024. This year, he has gone 122-of-180 for 1,181 yards, 11 touchdowns and four interceptions, while completing a career-best 67.8% of his throws.
Jenkins has already shown he can light up a defense. In UCF’s 42-28 loss to Oklahoma State on Oct. 10, he threw for 265 yards and four touchdowns. He topped that yardage mark in the Knights’ 39-31 double-overtime upset of BYU on Oct. 24, finishing with 293 yards and three touchdowns.
The flip side is the ball security issue that has followed him around. Jenkins has 29 interceptions across four seasons, including one in last week’s 41-9 loss to Baylor. He is listed as questionable, and Kansas’ secondary - which has had its share of struggles this season - will be waiting if he starts forcing throws.
Barnett is the backup, but he is no afterthought. The James Madison transfer threw 49 touchdowns there and has been productive in limited work this season, completing 39 of 65 passes for 477 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.
He has topped 100 passing yards in each of his three games and threw a touchdown in UCF’s 73-6 win over Bethune-Cookman on Sept. 3 and again in the 12-7 loss to Pittsburgh on Sept. 12.
Barnett is listed as probable and could be called on if Jenkins can’t go or gets knocked out again, as happened in the second half of UCF’s last game.
The Knights also have a pair of backs worth tracking in Duke Watson and Landen Chambers. Watson, a Louisville transfer, leads UCF with 92 carries for 597 yards and three touchdowns.
He needs one more yard to pass his 2024 career high. His biggest games have already made noise: 110 yards and a touchdown against Bethune-Cookman, plus 177 yards and two scores in the 44-30 win over Georgia State on Sept.
Watson hasn’t hit 100 yards or found the end zone since that Georgia State game, though he did post 94 yards on 15 carries against BYU. Kansas has done a strong job against the run over the last two weeks, and that trend will be tested if Watson gets rolling.
Chambers brings a different kind of threat. After starting his career at Central Arkansas, where he ran for 1,273 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2025, he has carved out a scoring role for UCF.
He has 42 carries for 185 yards and four touchdowns, with scores against Bethune-Cookman, TCU on Sept. 26 and BYU. His workload can vary wildly, but if UCF gets into the red zone, Chambers is the kind of back Kansas has to account for.
On the outside, Josh Derry has become a steady target. The Monmouth transfer piled up 2,054 receiving yards and 19 touchdowns in his first three college seasons, and at UCF he has 37 catches for 428 yards.
He has scored in three of the Knights’ last four games and is averaging 11.6 yards per catch. If Kansas’ secondary doesn’t build on what it did against TCU, Derry could be in line for a bigger day.
UCF also has impact players on defense, starting with Tackett Curtis. The linebacker began at USC, then moved on to Wisconsin before landing with the Knights, and he leads the team with 48 tackles.
He has added two sacks and two interceptions, including 10 tackles and a pick against Georgia State, nine tackles against Pittsburgh, an interception against BYU and sacks against both Bethune-Cookman and Baylor. Curtis can do more than clean up plays - he can create them, and that makes him a problem for Kansas’ offense.
Demari Henderson gives UCF another ballhawk in the secondary. In his fifth season with the Knights, he has 35 tackles and two interceptions after posting a career-high 61 tackles in 2025.
He had 10 tackles against Houston, seven tackles and two interceptions against Georgia State, and six tackles against Pittsburgh. With Kansas quarterback Isaiah Marshall throwing his share of interceptions, Henderson will be hunting for his first pick in nearly two months.
And if the game gets tight, UCF has a reliable leg in Will Stone. The Texas transfer is 29-for-29 on extra points and 9-for-11 on field goals, with a long of 57 yards against Baylor. If the Knights stall in the red zone, Stone gives them a way to leave with points instead of empty drives.
In Other News...
UCF Finally Ended Its Road Misery In A Wild Kansas Finish
UCF walked out of David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium with a 33-32 win over Kansas, finally snapping a 12-game road losing streak in a game that swung back and forth until the final seconds. Alonza Barnett III delivered the decisive touchdown pass to Caden Piening with three seconds left, and Will Stone added the extra point to complete a finish that left the Jayhawks on the wrong end of a wild one.
For Kansas, the loss only added to the frustration of a game that featured multiple lead changes and plenty of momentum shifts before UCF seized it at the end. Josh Derry and Taevion Swint were among the Knights who made their presence felt, and the result gave UCF a badly needed breakthrough away from home while leaving plenty for Kansas to sort through after another tight finish slipped away. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Fans Have Seen This Late-Game Collapse Far Too Often
Kansas had clawed back into the game and put itself in position to escape with a road win, only to watch it slip away in the final seconds against UCF. The finish was as chaotic as it was painful, with multiple reviewed plays shaping the closing stretch before the Knights cashed in on a walk-off touchdown catch and the extra point that sent the Jayhawks home with a 33-32 loss.
For Lance Leipolds team, the result fit an all-too-familiar script. Kansas has now lived through too many late-game defeats under Leipold, and this one stung because the comeback was real, the margin was there, and the decisive play came after a sequence that already had the game teetering on the edge. Caden Piening delivered the touchdown that ended it, leaving Kansas with another reminder of how quickly a promising finish can unravel. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Football Is Drifting Toward A Reset It Can Barely Afford
Kansas footballs slide this fall has put Lance Leipold in an uncomfortable spotlight, with the Jayhawks sitting at 3-6 and the path back to bowl eligibility growing narrower by the week. For a program that had finally started to feel stable under Leipold, the current drift is jarring, especially as the losses pile up and the questions around the direction of the team get louder.
Leipolds overall mark at Kansas now sits at 30-40, and the financial reality around any coaching change only adds another layer of hesitation. His buyout would be $17.9 million if he is fired after December 1, 2026, and with a major stadium construction project already stretching the programs resources, the Jayhawks are staring at a reset that would be expensive to make and even harder to justify. [Read more 🡒]