By BRYAN STRICKLAND

bstrickland@heraldsun.com; 419-6671

DURHAM — Externally, much of the talk about Duke football in the past week has focused on the quarterback situation.

Internally, the Blue Devils focused much of their energy on Kansas’ quarterback.

While the Blue Devils have learned that they have two capable quarterbacks, Kansas features the capability of two quarterbacks in one.

The only unsettled question about Jayhawks quarterback Todd Reesing is whether he’s more dangerous with his arm or his legs, a riddle the Blue Devils will try to solve when they visit No. 22 Kansas today for the first football meeting between the traditional basketball powers (noon, Versus).

If things had broken a little bit different with Reesing, the public debate over whether Duke incumbent starter Thad Lewis or promising freshman Sean Renfree should be seeing more snaps might be a moot point.

“They were my only school that I was looking at that I had an offer from before I came here,” Reesing said of Duke. “I had a chance to go up there and went to their camp. They hadn’t offered me anything, so I went up there and threw and ended up getting an offer after that.

“It was definitely a school I looked at. It is a school that has a very good reputation academically, and they were looking to build their program at the time and it was something I saw as an opportunity. But after I came here, I kind of knew that this is where I wanted to go.”

Reesing has made his mark at Kansas to say the least, already ranking as the school’s career leader in every major passing category. More importantly, he’s 20-6 as a starter, including bowl victories in each of his previous two seasons as starter, seasons in which he threw a total of 65 touchdown passes against 20 interceptions.

This season, he’s played a big part in Kansas outscoring its first two opponents by a combined score of 83-10, throwing for three touchdowns and running for two along the way.

“He’s one of the finest quarterbacks as far as being a playmaker that I’ve ever seen,” Duke coach David Cutcliffe said. “When he pulls it down and starts roaming — I’m going to call it ‘roaming,’ not scrambling — he’s very capable of running with the football, but he’s uncanny at finding people. He’s unbelievably accurate out of a scramble.

“Wherever he is on the field, he can still attack.”

Reesing can run, but it’s more as a means to buy him more time to use his arm. Duke’s defense mostly has done the job against two run-first teams to start the season, but this is a whole different ballgame.

“We’ve got to switch gears,” Duke defensive end Ayanga Okpokowuruk said. “We’ve got to get pressure and get to him to help the secondary, because they’ve got a big job ahead of them.”

Lewis has a chance to break many of Duke’s career passing records, but he needs to keep his job to keep piling up the numbers.

Renfree saw his first action a week ago against Army and led the Blue Devils back to victory. Both quarterbacks will see action today, with Lewis remaining as the starter, and the Blue Devils know they’ll need to put up points regardless of who’s under center to keep up with Reesing and the Jayhawks.

“We certainly have our hands full,” Cutcliffe said. “It’s quite a challenge, but it’s quite an opportunity to play a team of this stature.”