Kansas Jayhawks Head coach: Les Miles (first year) 2018 record and S&P+ ranking: 3-9 (100th) Projected 2019 record and S&P+ ranking: 3-9 (107th) Five key points: Miles is back in our lives. Bask in that, and then bask some more. And then a little more. And more. That’s about the end of the positivity, though. Miles made two shaky coordinator hires and inherits a roster that has about one proven play-maker. And he technically might not be on the team. If RB Pooka Williams Jr. is allowed back on the roster, he will carry a heavy load, running behind a big, experienced line. That sounds like a “Les Miles offense” thing to say, right? The defense is almost completely starting over in the front seven, but there’s experience and at least a smidge of disruptive talent in the secondary. KU is favored against two cupcakes and is at least a 12-point underdog against every P5 opponent. Win the two gimmes and pull a fun, Milesian upset, and we’ll call Year 1 a success.

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You had to feel for David Beaty. By offering him its head coaching job, Kansas sealed his résumé’s fate.

A 44-year old position coach at the time, Beaty took a job no coach with major demand would have accepted, and it went as it was always destined to go. He inherited from Charlie Weis a roster that was devoid of both proven talent and a young base.

Weis had gone from eschewing JUCO transfers to desperately signing almost nothing but them in just two years, and guys left more quickly than Beaty could legally replace them. Beaty would later say Kansas had 39 scholarship players on the roster when he showed up, 28 after spring ball.

It took Beaty till the first game of his second year to win a game, and it took till the second-to-last game of that year to beat an FBS opponent (Texas, of all teams). Kansas went a ghastly 6-42 in his tenure, a .125 win percentage that was worse than either Weis’ (.214) or Turner Gill’s before him (.208). Beaty is currently suing KU to earn his $3 million buyout the school attempted to use a loophole to avoid, and paying him $3 million is the least Kansas can do for the résumé damage it inflicted on him.

The best thing, in fact, that you can say about Beaty’s tenure is that he at least left the Jayhawks as he found them.

In his final fall in Lawrence, Beaty’s Jayhawks won as many games (three) as they had in his first three years combined, and they improved to 100th in S&P+, two spots ahead of where Weis had ranked in his last year. A No. 100 ranking is clearly awful, but it was also KU’s best since 2013.

In theory, that could have meant that KU could pull a Washington State. Back in 2011, Wazzu gave Paul Wulff a fourth year on the job despite a disastrous record — 5-32 in his first three years — and it paid off when the Cougars improved to merely bad in his final season (4-8, 72nd in S&P+). The program was still in relative shambles, but the job was just attractive enough at that point to attract a more proven head coach in Mike Leach. Two years earlier, it probably wasn’t.

Technically, KU got a proven coach, too.

Les Miles had built a decent IMDB page since he was fired from LSU early in the 2016 season. He had the personality to eventually become a pretty good college football commentator if he wanted to go that route. Or, since he is at retirement age for normal professions, the 65-year old could have simply decided to buy a ranch and disappear.

He wanted to coach again. Most aging coaches do. He couldn’t find any takers during the 2016 or 2017 coaching carousels, but late in 2018 he found a match. Granted, it was a “last two people in the bar at the end of the night” sort of match, but that’s just semantics.

Miles has won 142 games as a head coach. Before he took LSU to five top-10 finishes and the 2007 national title, he helped to lay the foundation for the Oklahoma State program that Mike Gundy would eventually so capably lead. Even after he seemed to lose his fastball at LSU, he was still producing eight- and nine-win seasons.

So why didn’t anyone want him leading their program? You’d have to survey athletic directors to know for sure, but it wasn’t hard to assume that Miles just seemed a little bit past his sell-by date. His LSU offenses were retrograde, continuing to lean on girth and the run game well after football began shifting more toward spreading things out. In his last eight seasons in Baton Rouge, LSU’s offense ranked worse than 30th in Off. S&P+ five times; granted, it was never worse than 41st, but when you’re signing top-five classes with regularity, you want at least top-15 results.

There was the major rub: he could still win eight to 10 games a year with top-notch recruiting, but no one that could sign a top class was going to hire him. And now he takes over a Power Five program that hasn’t inked even a top-40 class since 2011 and has, per the 247Sports Composite, signed four four-star prospects this decade. Miles has to go back to the underdog days of his early OSU tenure.

If there’s good news here, it’s that the bar at Lawrence is ... basically on the floor. If he simply builds a competent, physical squad that can recruit around an identity, pull an occasional upset, and maybe threaten to win five or six games within the next few years, then his tenure will have been a success. But that’s obviously not a given.

Related The 2018 advanced college football stats glossary

Offense

Within two months, Miles was already on his second offensive coordinator. He lured Chip Lindsey away from his stale marriage as Auburn OC, but then Lindsey took the Troy head coaching job. Having tried and failed at the “hire a young up-and-comer” approach, Miles did what he does a lot: he went old-school.

Les Koenning will be calling the plays for Miles’ first team. The 60-year old former Texas wideout has served as OC at Duke, Houston, Alabama, Texas A&M, South Alabama, Mississippi State, and UAB. His last two tenures were frustrating — he couldn’t top 37th in Off. S&P+ at MSU despite top-25 overall talent and QB Dak Prescott (the Bulldogs leaped to 10th the year after he left), and his first and only UAB offense ranked 117th.

Koenning’s career peak came with the physical, run-heavy A&M offenses of the mid-aughts. In theory, he could enjoy what he has to work with, as basically the only semi-proven aspect of this KU roster is the run game.

KU ranked a perfectly decent 67th in Rushing S&P+ last year, thanks primarily to the work of then-freshman Pooka Williams Jr., one of the decade’s aforementioned four four-stars. He rushed for 1,125 yards (7 per carry) — he had 252 in a wild loss to Oklahoma — and caught 33 of 40 passes for 289 yards and a 45 percent success rate.

Williams is a hell of a potential parting gift from Beaty to Miles ... but only if he’s eligible to play. He was suspended from the program in December due to a domestic battery allegation.

Williams signed a diversion agreement to avoid conviction, and I’m guessing he ends up back with the team before fall camp. If he doesn’t, the number of proven offensive players on the roster goes from one to zero.

Backup backs Khalil Herbert and Dom Williams are decent (Herbert is reasonably explosive, and Dom Williams’ efficiency numbers were slightly better than Pooka’s, albeit without the big plays), and you could do worse than left tackle Hakeem Adeniji. But the four-star sophomore is the only difference maker here. The line is experienced and meaty — Adeniji and five others with starting experience have an average size of 6’5, 310 — but this isn’t a great unit without Pooka.

The passing game is, to put it charitably, an unknown. Three of last year’s top four wideouts are gone, leaving junior possession man Stephon Robinson Jr. and long-ago Alabama transfer Daylon Charlot as the leading returning options. Charlot did average a team-best 14.8 yards per catch last year, but on just 12 catches. Miles signed two three-star JUCOs to provide desperately-needed depth.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the QB position. Insert all shrug emojis here. It appears JUCO transfer Thomas MacVittie is your most likely starter, but anybody from a pool of MacVittie, senior Carter Stanley, sophomore Miles Kendrick, UNC grad transfer Manny Miles (Les’ son), and freshmen Torry Locklin or Jordan Medley could see the field at some point.

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Defense

Miles indeed went younger with his defensive coordinator hire, selecting 42-year old former Kentucky and Colorado DC D.J. Eliot.

Like Koenning, Eliot’s track record isn’t amazing. In four seasons under Mark Stoops at UK, he averaged a Def. S&P+ ranking of 73, and in two years in Boulder he averaged 71. His next top-50 defense will be his first.

Granted, a No. 71 defense would be KU’s second-best of the decade. The Jayhawks leaped to 55th in 2013 but haven’t topped even 94th since 2014.

When Eliot’s CU defenses were at their best, it was because of an exciting linebacking corps. The Buffaloes were eighth in linebacker havoc rate (tackles for loss, passes defensed, and forced fumbles divided by total plays); you figure Eliot would have enjoyed working with Joe Dineen Jr. and Keith Loneker Jr. Unfortunately, they’re both gone. Only one returning linebacker made more than two havoc plays last year: junior and former reserve Kyron Johnson.

Eliot might have also enjoyed tackle Daniel Wise, but he’s also gone, as are five of last year’s top six tacklers on the line. Pass rusher Azur Kamara is the only returning lineman who made more than six tackles.

The front seven is pretty dire, in other words. Miles signed a pair of JUCO tackles, and it’s going to take Eliot quite a bit of experimentation to get the right pieces in the right places. If four-star freshman linebacker Steven Parker were ready out of the gates, that would be a welcome development.

There’s at least continuity in the secondary. KU ranked 103rd in passing marginal efficiency, 126th on passing downs, but there was a lot of shuffling going on -- 10 defensive backs were on the field long enough to make at least five tackles. Granted, you’d like to blame struggles more on youth than is possible here (there were only three freshmen and sophomores among these 10).

Still, there are some potential play-makers in this group. Bryce Torneden recorded 5.5 tackles for loss and 8.5 run stuffs from the nickel position, safety Mike Lee is a keeper, and sophomore Corione Harris (another rare four-star) and senior Hasan Defense combined for three TFLs and 16 passes defensed.

Harris and sophomore safety Davon Ferguson could provide a nice base of talent moving forward, but the secondary will lose up to six or seven contributing seniors after this year. It will take a step backwards just as the front six/seven theoretically starts to figure things out.

Special Teams

Beaty didn’t leave Miles a lot to work with in special teams. The Jayhawks were 71st in Special Teams S&P+ (not horrible!), but Gabriel Rui was the bright spot (he was 6-for-8 on field goals longer than 40 yards), and he’s gone. Pooka Williams (if on the roster) and Kwamie Lassiter II have potential as return men, and punter Kyle Thompson isn’t horrible, but this isn’t a great unit by any means.

2019 outlook

Win your first two games, and figure out the rest as you go. That’s pretty much the only goal for KU in 2019. The Jayhawks begin with home games against Indiana State (a projected 10-point win per S&P+) and Coastal Carolina (a six-point win) and are underdogs by at least 12.6 points in every remaining game.

This being a Les Miles team, you figure KU pulls a wild upset somewhere along the way — and it better involve some ridiculous fake punt or triple-deflection — but on paper this team has far too many question marks to hope for more than about 3-9 or, best-case, 4-8.

Again, the bar is awfully low for Miles, and all it’ll take is one upset or one five-win season in the next two or three years for us to feel like he’s done a good job. But the odds are pretty good that his coaching career will now officially end with quite a few more losses on his docket than he had before. But I guess it beats buying a ranch and disappearing.

Team preview stats

All 2019 preview data to date.