SE: Peaking at the Right Time

By Jesse Ertz as told to D. Scott Fritchen

A lot of different things went through my head as I stood on stage at NRG Stadium and wore the Stetson hat at the end of the 2016 Texas Bowl. Although we beat Texas A&M 33-28 with the youngest team under Coach Snyder, we were talented and had confidence. As the season went on, we continued to get better, and we peaked at the right time. I thought about my teammates and how hard we worked to make this moment possible.

I was also just very proud that I was finally doing what I dreamed of — winning big games.

The week of the game, it became kind of annoying to hear about all the individuals on the Texas A&M team. Myles Garrett is having a very good NFL career, but a lot of the lead up to the bowl game was about Texas A&M's talent. They weren't unlike anybody we'd played during the year. We had a chip on our shoulder. It was insulting that they got a lot of credit before we even played the game.

The SEC factor didn't really get me more excited. Maybe it'd be different today because the SEC continues to be talked about. But the whole experience of getting to play a team outside of the Big 12 Conference was more fun than the fact that it was against the SEC. Bowl games are fun because you usually play an opponent you wouldn't think you'd play, like Michigan, Arkansas, UCLA and Texas A&M.

We had a lot more talent than people gave us credit for in 2016. I don't feel like we ever took the field and felt like we didn't have enough talent to be competitive or win a game. The culture and personalities that makes a team is so important, and we had great personalities. Everybody pushed in the same direction. Everyone went above what was necessary. We all played for each other. We knew we had a lot of youth going into the season. When you have that you're going to have some nerves and some operational errors early.

We started the season at 3-3 and then won six of our final seven games. We beat Iowa State on the road and Baylor on the road. We definitely found our identity at the back end of the year. We finished the season averaging a school-record 5.26 yards per carry and with seven consecutive 200-yard rushing performances. Our young offensive linemen, our young running backs and wide receivers, and our young quarterback came together. The more we won, the more confident we became, and the more we found that identity and started to smell blood in the water.

We really took pride in mauling people.

The Texas Bowl was a classic K-State style of game. We had an end-around read option for a touchdown, a big passing play for a score, we ran the ball really well, and we had a couple pop-pass plays. We were all dialed in, and everybody executed.

I remember on the second possession I launched a soft 24-yard fade pass to Byron Pringle and he took it the distance. In football vernacular, we were in a three-by-one on the field — three guys toward the middle of the field and one by the boundary. As a quarterback, there are a lot of times you're doing a game of percentages in your head while reading a coverage. Through preparation, you know the down-and-distance and you know the percentage of each coverage you might get based upon the defense's tendencies. You look for tips that tell you one of two things. There are two high safeties, but they might be rolling to one. The safety might be inside the hash, so maybe it's a soft corner.

On the play, I remember seeing a safety on the hash to the boundary and it looked like the coverage could be going to cover-2, which would give me a hole shot, which we call it, where basically the corner lets Byron go in hopes that the safety will pick him up, and you can throw the ball into the hole.

I hedged my bet with the field scheme, and I put a little fade on the backside. I peeked as I dropped back and saw that Byron had a good release and beat his guy off the line and I hit the hole shot. I tell Byron all the time I feel bad that we didn't get more of those that season. Fortunately, we hit one and could see what Byron does with the ball.

I remember toward the end I ran it in from the 1-yard line for a 33-21 lead. That spoke to all the players on offense. It was a close game and we smelled blood in the water. In a situation like that, we all looked at each other and knew we had to get a push there. I was simply the guy holding the football. The moment I ran forward, some of my teammates speared me in the back to get a good push. Hats off to the offensive line. We ran the ball well all game. Texas A&M had a physical front seven. Those quarterback sneaks, man, we really had a high success rate on them, but they're never really fun.

In the end, the defense secured the victory down the stretch. We would've loved to have had the game won by that point. Our defense played good all game and had played well all season. It wasn't the first time they'd closed a game out for us. They did exactly what they did all year and got it done. We leaned on the defense, and they got it done one last time.

The win over Texas A&M gave us a perfect 5-0 record against schools from the state of Texas for the first time in history. We had a lot of Texas players on our team. There was always a certain pride about Texas teams and their football. There was a thought that they thought they were better than we were as a program.

You hear about these Texas teams during the preseason.

You can't help but enjoy the opportunity to smash them.

Kansas State University Athletics

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