This is the Depth Dossier: the Kansas Jayhawks, Week 7.

Kansas State beat Kansas twice in one game last week, once on a punter's fumble and once on a drive that just wouldn't end, and the final was 35 to 24 in a Sunflower Showdown that got away from the Jayhawks late.

Kansas actually looked like the better team early. Wide receiver Nik McMillan caught a touchdown, and Bryson Hayes took a kickoff back for a score to put Kansas up 17 to 7. Then it all came apart. A second-quarter safety flipped the momentum right before halftime, and Kansas State's running game, which finished with 359 yards on the ground, did the rest. Quarterback Isaiah Marshall threw for 151 yards and a touchdown and ran for a career-high 117 yards, and Kansas didn't score a single point in the second half. The defense got worn down, losing the time of possession battle by more than twelve minutes, and had no answer when Kansas State closed it out with a long drive in the fourth quarter.

That opening stretch was wild even by rivalry standards. Kansas State drove 75 yards to score, and just thirteen seconds of game clock later, Hayes had already returned the kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. Two scores on back-to-back snaps of the ball changing hands, and for a minute Kansas looked like the house.

But the play that actually decided this game came with Kansas still leading, 17 to 13. Punter Matt Gill got pressured in his own end zone and fumbled it away for a safety. On paper it's just an eleven-yard loss, but it swung the whole game. Kansas State rode that momentum to an eleven-point second-quarter surge that buried Kansas's lead for good.

After that, the Kansas offense just vanished. Seventeen points in the first quarter, zero the rest of the way, as Kansas State's defense shut off the passing lanes and forced Marshall into long-yardage situations all night for Kansas's defense to deal with. The Jayhawks' defense was stuck on the field for 75 plays, which explains both the 359 rushing yards allowed and the final drive that ate over five minutes off the clock.

A few details worth holding onto. Marshall's 117 rushing yards were his second career hundred-yard rushing game, even though his passing never got in rhythm after halftime, finishing twelve-of-twenty-six. McMillan caught five passes for 55 yards and that one touchdown, and he was basically the only part of the Kansas offense that showed up after the first quarter. And Hayes's return stands as the most electric play of the game, one that nearly stole it outright.

Now, let's get into the depth chart, because there's real movement here.

No injuries were reported, which is notable on its own, given how physical a 75-play game with 359 rushing yards allowed tends to be.

The bigger story is on the defensive line, and it's the same direction it trended a week ago against Utah. Defensive lineman Blake Herold is now playing close to every snap, at four-fifths of the game, and both Leroy Harris and David Santiago are up to three-quarters shares. Marcus Calvin, Kevin Oatis and Eamon Smalls all picked up more rotational snaps, while Clifton Thompson dropped down to spot duty. Two straight weeks of the line's snaps climbing suggests this isn't just about matchups anymore. It looks like a real shift in how the rotation up front is being built.

The linebackers went the other way again. Trey Lathan and Bam Crouch both dipped to four-fifths shares, and Quincy Davis, Malachi Curvey and Jibreel Al-Amin were all scaled back further, continuing what started against Utah. Is that about matchups, or is the staff just trusting the line more to handle the run? Worth watching, especially since a defense that just gave up 359 rushing yards needs that front-seven balance to show up against a lighter rushing attack.

In the secondary, defensive back Austin Alexander jumped back up to a four-fifths role, a real bounce back after his snaps had shrunk the week before.

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