Kansas and Baylor will meet at 12 p.m. at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium in a Big 12 football game that arrives with both teams trying to reset after losses last weekend. The matchup will air on TNT, truTV and HBO Max.
For Kansas, the need is simple: turn the season back in the right direction after a 35-24 defeat at Kansas State. Baylor comes in with a stronger record, but the line between solid and shaky is not as wide as it first appears when a team follows a 17-6 home loss to TCU with a road trip into a difficult setting.
Baylor has given up fewer than 20 points in every game this season, a stretch that covers all of its games to this point and gives Lance Leipold plenty to worry about. The Bears also lead the Big 12 with 22 sacks, with Daniel Cobbs and Bo Onu each posting three, while Travion Barnes leads the defense with 36 total tackles, including 26 solo. Add in six interceptions and five fumble recoveries, and Kansas will have to solve a defense that has repeatedly ended drives before they become threats.
Leipold called Baylor a fine football team with only two losses and said his own players must expect a sharper response from opponents after Kansas' early success. That is the friction point in this matchup: Baylor has the numbers to look dominant, yet it also opened the season with a loss to Auburn in Atlanta on an unsuccessful two-point conversion with nine seconds left and then followed a four-game winning streak with that flat showing against TCU. Kansas, meanwhile, is trying to recover from inconsistency on both sides of the ball, which makes the margin for error small on a noon kickoff.
The result will say more than the timing of the game. If Kansas can force Baylor out of its rhythm, the Jayhawks can change the tone of their season; if not, Baylor's defensive profile should travel well enough to keep the Bears in position to build on what they have already shown. Either way, this is the kind of game that can tilt the rest of the month for both teams.
