They have a good offense.
While I don't follow ku recruiting that closely, from what I can tell is that their staff made a big mistake in not building the defense first, in addition, if you don't have a good defense you can't try to be ou/Baylor/TT lite and run some kind of fast break offense.
In looking at the drive charts against OSU, their QB was responsible for 3 turnovers, all on passing plays. It seems as though Long feel in love with the passing game because they moved the ball with it on their first drive. Chuck Long must think that DC's in the Big 12 are idiots and won't make adjustments. Again, just by reading the drive charts my impression is that almost every negative play that caused the snowball of the first half, except one, came out of the passing game.