Kansas football's late-season slide came down to the same problems Lance Leipold has pointed to for weeks. After the loss to Utah, he didn’t sugarcoat it.

“We were not nearly the red-zone team we need to be to play winning football,” Leipold said. The Jayhawks moved the ball but couldn’t finish drives, a theme that showed up again Friday when a potential go-ahead score turned into an interception and a pick-six.

Turnovers were another issue. “When you’re playing a ranked football team, you can’t have those things happen and hope to win,” Leipold said. Kansas hadn’t had a three-turnover game all season until its finale.

He also acknowledged the margins in college football are thin, and Kansas didn’t handle them well enough. “The margin for error for teams like us continues to be fairly small,” he said.

A 4–2 start turned into a 5–7 finish, and Leipold summed it up simply: “We’ve underachieved by most people’s standards.” Now the Jayhawks will enter a crucial offseason.