Kansas Football: Carter Stanley finding his groove in 2019
Kansas football pulled off a victory over Texas Tech on Saturday night, winning on a last second field goal. Lost in the recent “success” of KU football has been quarterback Carter Stanley, who has stepped it up in 2019.
The Kansas Jayhawks have actually been enjoyable to watch the past few weeks and while football is a team sport, Carter Stanley deserves a lot of credit in that department. The KU quarterback had another brilliant game against Texas Tech, throwing for 415 yards, three touchdowns, and an interception. He had just 11 incompletions.
This has been a surprising season for Stanley, who has thrown for a career high in yards despite only playing in seven games this year (he played in nine in 2016 and eight in 2017). Stanley, prior to the game against Texas Tech, had thrown for 1,485 yards, 16 touchdowns, and four interceptions.
It’s hard not to credit Stanley’s resurgence to Les Miles, who took over the reigns of the program this year and already has the Jayhawks looking improved. No, KU won’t go to a bowl game this year, but fans are slowly, but surely seeing the improvements front and center.
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Early in the season, the Jayhawks broke their long streak of not beating a Power-5 team on the road, doing so against Boston College. Not only did they beat the Eagles, they pounded them in Boston.
Just last week, Kansas took the then-15th ranked Texas Longhorns down to the wire and Carter Stanley had himself a game in that one too, throwing for 310 yards and four touchdowns and also rushing for 65 yards against Texas.
It’s also worth noting that Stanley had a solid performance against the then-sixth ranked Oklahoma Sooners earlier this month. In that game, Stanley threw for 230 yards and three touchdowns off of 18 completions. It wasn’t an all-star kind of game, but he limited his mistakes and prevented that game from being even more lopsided.
Whether Les Miles coming to Lawrence has heavily impacted Carter Stanley or not, it’s been great to see this kid finally show what he can do. It was a rough go of it early on for Stanley, but he’s toughed it out and now we’re seeing just how good of a quarterback he can be.
The end result was KU’s first Big 12 victory of the Les Miles era.
Next up for Kansas football is the Sunflower Showdown against Kansas State, who just took down fifth ranked Oklahoma on Saturday. That should be a fun one!