SI - Les Miles admits his Kansas team ran the RPO, parts of it acquired from Aub

SI - Week 3 of college football provided its share of entertainment and intrigue, but no result turned heads quite like this one, a stunner that swept the nation on a Friday night, no less, while being broadcast on the new ACC Network. It didn’t matter that millions of fans couldn’t watch the game. It only mattered that it was Les Miles, the Les Miles, the former championship-winning LSU coach, the wanna-be movie star, the beer commercial actor, the quirky guy who butchers the English language like no other, that Les Miles, in his third game as coach of major college football’s doormat.

What made it even more unbelievable is that his team six days before had lost at home to Coastal Carolina by the score of 12–7. Making it even more unfathomable is that Kansas hadn’t won a road game against a Power 5 program in 11 years, a stretch of 48 straight losses that dates back to the days of the very first iPhones. Walking off the field after the win over the Eagles, a KU staff member handed to Miles a message on his phone noting the streak. The coach turned to athletic director Jeff Long, walking alongside him. “I said, ‘Jeff, did you know this?’” Miles says. “He says, ‘Yes, but I didn’t tell you everything when I hired you.’”


What the coach (Miles) does not reveal, until specifically asked, is his team’s reinventive offensive approach. The Jayhawks abandoned the traditional offense used in its first two games and incorporated spread concepts equipped with the latest trend in college football: the run-pass option. Wait just a minute. Is Les Miles, the run-heavy, old-school, fullback-led football coach, really running the RPO? “It’s not the entire thing you do. It’s a part of your offense, but…” he pauses, “yeah.”

After the game, Stanley said Kansas offensive consultant Brent Dearmon brought the scheme with him when he joined the staff in January from a past that includes stops at the NAIA and Division II levels and an analyst role for Gus Malzahn at Auburn. Coaches have implemented the system in “bits and pieces,” Miles says. “Feel like we’re probably really just scratching the surface of what it is and how to operate it.” The scheme might be the most significant factor in the win, but there’s much more to it. Defensive coordinator D.J. Eliot’s unit pitched a second-half shutout, and KU backs Khalil Herbert and Pooka Williams combined to run for 308 yards. The Jayhawks reeled off 20 unanswered points against a team that has qualified for a bowl in five of the last six years.


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