Kansas has been known for its high-flying offense in recent years. This season is no exception, as the Jayhawks rolled up more than 35 points per game so far this season. The offense, however, has overshadowed a talented defense.

With nine starters returning to the defense from last year’s Bowl Championship Series squad, Kansas is the ranked eighteenth in scoring defense in the country, giving up just 15.3 points per game coming into the Iowa State game on Saturday.

“They have multiple defenses that they come at you with,” said sophomore quarterback Phillip Bates. “They will bring the blitz, they are just very sound in what they do. They know what they are going to do and they will do it well.”

The Kansas defense begins with what coach Gene Chizik called aggressive and physical play. That style of play has allowed them to hold opponents to less the 4 yards per rush and just 98 yards rushing per game.

The only apparent chink in its armor is the passing defense, where Kansas ranks 76 in the nation in yards allowed, with over 217 yards per game. That statistic may be a little bit skewed, however. They have had big leads in most games so far this year, forcing opponents to throw an average of more than 38 times per game to try to come back. Conversely, Iowa State’s average is just 27 attempts per game.

“[Kansas is] real comfortable with what they do,” Chizik said. “When you’ve had nine starters coming off an Orange Bowl team, I mean, that really kind of speaks for itself.”

With the Jayhawk offense playing as it is, Iowa State is going to have to score against the Kansas defense in order to keep the game close.

“We’ve talked about scoring: We have to score 30 to 40 points because Kansas is going to score at will,” said sophomore quarterback Austen Arnaud.

In order for the Cyclones to outgun the Jaywalks, they will also have to straighten out their own struggles on offense.

“We have got to be more productive on offense, period,” Chizik said. “We can’t live the season with — take away the second half [against UNLV] — the previous six quarters we played offensively; we can’t do that and win any games.”

Luckily for the Cyclones, the second half against UNLV has given them hope, as they will try to carry that momentum over, into their next game.

“That’s something we are looking to do,” Arnaud said. “A lot of good things happened in that second half. From my standpoint, I made some good decisions, I made a couple of bad ones, but it’s something we can build off of.”