LAWRENCE — Playing on a Thursday in Week 1 and a Saturday in Week 2 can seem like an eternity for a college football team. But it can also have its benefits.
No. 19 Kansas will play Illinois on Friday on the road, and KU wide receiver Luke Grimm said the extra time should help the Jayhawks in their first true road game of the season.
“It’s definitely going to help,” Grimm. “We got the weekend to be in the film room as much as we want and have extra days to recover and have extra days off of practice.
“So everybody’s going to be feeling healthy and feeling good. And we feel like we just started so everybody’s itching to play football. There’ll be no rust. Everybody’s itching to get out there.”
KU (1-0), however, won’t have a huge rest advantage against Illinois. The Illini (1-0) also opened their season last Thursday. While the Jayhawks blew out Lindenwood, the Illini did the same against Eastern Illinois.
Against Lindenwood, the Jalon Daniels to Grimm connection was on full display. Grimm caught six passes for 111 yards and a 58-yard touchdown in the first half before the backups took over in the second half.
Daniels, who hadn’t played in nearly a year, went 9 of 15 for 148 yards with the TD to Grimm. As freshmen, Grimm said his first memory of Daniels was when they arrived on campus in June 2020 in the sweltering heat, and since they couldn’t go to the facility because of covid, they threw passes and ran routes on a field across the street from their apartments.
“We were at the field day and night for the first three or four weeks of the summer,” Grimm said. “Then we started fall camp and we’re in a hotel and we’re eating and doing film with each other during covid, and it was right back to Stouffer field and that’s the first spot where all the freshmen in that class were there with us.
“It’d be like midnight or one or two in the morning, and we’d all be out there running pass plays and run plays trying to figure out each other’s schemes and stuff and how we worked.”
The two have connected on many big plays over the years, and against Lindenwood, Grimm accounted for all but 37 of Daniels’ passing yards.
“I thought Luke Grimm really played well there for a stretch of 15 minutes maybe on the clock,” KU coach Lance Leipold said. “It was really impressive.”
The two, however, had one play where Daniels thew a pass intended for Grimm, but it was intercepted as the two read the defense different ways. Grimm, though, was just happy to see KU’s leader back on the field playing again.
“I thought it was a great performance,” Grimm said. “We had the one mishap where I thought it was one coverage, and he thought it was another. We’ll get back to the film room and watch that, but he’s making good throws all night, and that’s just what he does.”
