Kansas State University Athletics
K-State Coordinators Preview Cincinnati Contest
Nov 21, 2024 | Football
MANHATTAN, Kan. – Kansas State offensive coordinator Conor Riley and defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman met with members of the media on Thursday at the Vanier Family Football Complex prior to the Wildcats hosting Cincinnati on Saturday night inside Bill Snyder Family Stadium. Links to video and audio of both press conferences are above, and a transcript of select quotes are below.
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CONOR RILEY, OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR
On what he can take from the last game and apply it forward…
"We need to start faster. We talk about it. Guys, I'm searching, we're all searching. It's like, 'Coach, you should be able to pinpoint the exact point as to why.' If you did that, guys, you'd be the wisest guy in the world. So, one of the things that we talked about is there is stress out there. You look at it and say, coming off of a loss the previous week, mentally, are you saying, 'Man, we have to win this game to do this,' as opposed to looking at, 'Let's take it one play at a time.' That was the message. I don't know exactly that we did that. I think that there's a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of puckering up. We talk about overcoming adversity through the entirety of it, and that was ample on Saturday evening. How we continue to grow and learn from that is very important. One of the big positives is – and I really took a very keen eye to this when I was grading that film early hours of Sunday morning – in spite of what the score was in that second half, I thought the guys really did play extremely hard. Maybe that's trying to find silver lining, and I understand that. Right now, after coming off a few losses, that's something you have to do, but I was proud of that."
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On scoring droughts and not being able to sustain drives…
"It goes to what I said earlier, the inconsistency, because you look at our drives and, on the first drive, we have obviously a turnover on the second play. Then you go back to a particular second drive, and we're in a third and long because we aren't running the ball in early downs well enough. I thought that they (Arizona State) did something a little bit out of the norm there early. On the third down, that first three and out, we had a missed assignment. A guy missed a signal, and he had a missed assignment. It was a good scheme into the defense that we saw that would have given us an opportunity. You saw Avery (Johnson) get flushed back out to the left because one of the guys didn't quite hit his landmark. The consistency guys – I challenged the offensive line. Play call or no play call, we had two opportunities to get, at the end of the day, three and a half feet in two downs, and we didn't execute in those situations. There's poor technique on one, there was a physical issue on the other one. Then you get into that next series, and we have a turnover inside the 30, which does not even account for the 2-of-5 in the red zone because that's not in the red zone, then a drive that we didn't finish in the red zone. I think that was the entirety of the first half right there. Part of it is settling in, being more consistent with a run game. I have to do a better job of maybe getting some things a little bit more out on the perimeter, which you saw us looking to do. That's probably where I see it, and Coach (Klieman) touched on it – and I couldn't agree with him more – some of our inability to run the football early. I thought we figured some things out there towards the latter part of the second quarter and then in the second half, but at that point, because of the situation, you're down 24-0, and that makes it tough."
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On what he wants to see from the offense on Saturday…
"I want to see the execution. I want to see discipline, and I want to see the execution. That's the biggest thing right now that we're lacking. Whether it's holding onto the ball, ball security, whether it's running the right route, whether it's using proper technique up front. Those are all things that are 100% within our control. They make a hell of a play on the pick, a tipped ball, those things happen. You go out and get beat, those things happen. That's life, that's the game of football. I want to see the execution. I want to see guys flying around, cutting it loose, playing free and executing at a high level. And I'm responsible. I'm responsible for those things that are burning us right now, and they're getting exposed. That's what I want to see come Saturday night."
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JOE KLANDERMAN, DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR
On the Cincinnati offense…
"They run the ball really well. They have two really good running backs, a quarterback that runs, and they will run him. They complement that with a good naked, play action pass game with some talented receivers outside. They do a really good job offensively, schematically. I think they're just sound in what they do. They have a tight end that can stretch you and catch the ball, and they have a RPO game to complement that as well. So, they just keep you off balance a little."
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On why Arizona State was able to connect on deep throws…
"Third down was the problem. We just weren't able to get off the field on third down. We've been pressuring a little bit on third down, and that's been a very efficient thing for us. If you looked at the numbers all year, we've been excellent there, and we just weren't on Saturday. We had four third-down pressures, and one of them hit and got the ball thrown away; one was just an outstanding blitz that came clean and couldn't hit it any faster, but the quarterback just drifted to 20 yards deep and threw a ball up and caught an 11-yard pass on third and 10. It's frustrating. Two times we fell down – one time fell down after the ball had been caught. It would have been close on the sticks, and then we were third and 11 on the first series of the game, we just simply fell down with one of our best coverage people. So, I've got to do a better job of putting those guys in better situations. Those are situations that we've won all year, and we just weren't winning them on Saturday. Part of it is the receiver, No. 0 (Jordyn Tyson) was a really good player. I don't say we underestimated him, but we probably didn't pay him the attention that maybe we would have paid a couple other guys throughout the course of the year. Maybe that was a miscalculation on our part. But, we've got to do a better job on third down, getting ourselves off. We're fighting our butts off to get in those situations, and then we don't win. That's frustrating."
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On what the seniors mean to him…
"When we got here, those weren't our guys. They became our guys, but they were guys that were recruited by other people. These are guys that we brought in, and some of them have earned their way onto this roster. You think of Austin Moore, and you think of Brendan Mott and guys that kind of snuck in through the back door, so to speak. They've changed this culture. How they've evolved over time, I just think of Austin Moore's journey kind of being in the shadow, kind of being the second-fiddle guy to Daniel Green, and then the transformation that he went through a year ago when Daniel Green had his career end really suddenly. Him taking over that leadership role, and then him having the courage or competitiveness to come back after last year didn't finish the way we wanted it to finish. Guys like that just mean the world. The guys that came along the way, the Marques Sigles, the guys that have meant so much to this program that didn't start here, may not have originated here, but they become K-State. We've got to have everyone on board for those guys because those guys mean a lot to me, personally, and they mean a lot to this program."
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On the defenses mental state…
"We have a lot of competitors. We talk a lot about how we never let our circumstances dictate how we show up. It's frustrating circumstances right now, so we're really being tested in that ethos right now. I thought our mental state was fine going into Arizona State. I thought we were a little shell shocked early, to be honest. We kind of got off the field on that first drive and got a defensive holding on Damian Ilalio, of all people – which I don't know if I saw or didn't see – but that's frustrating. You get them to third and 11 and they convert because we fall down. That's frustrating. Then again, you turn around, and they got the ball again on the 45-yard line, and we three-and-outed them. I thought our guys were ready to play, but it just wasn't our night. I believe that our guys will be ready to play again."
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On if opposing offensive lines are paying more attention to Brendan Mott…
"It's hard because we've got a lot of really good rush men. We've got some guys that can get after it. We design pressures and things enough to manipulate protections where he doesn't get some of that stuff. What I will say, as a whole, is people are keeping tight ends in more, people are keeping backs in more against us. We see a lot more max protection stuff than most other teams see. We look at it on Sunday, and a team might not be a max protection team, and lo and behold, they've kept their tight ends in half the time. So, guys are paying respect to our rush, and it's putting a little bit more heat on the coverage when they do that. So, I guess Brendan is certainly a big part of that."
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CONOR RILEY, OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR
On what he can take from the last game and apply it forward…
"We need to start faster. We talk about it. Guys, I'm searching, we're all searching. It's like, 'Coach, you should be able to pinpoint the exact point as to why.' If you did that, guys, you'd be the wisest guy in the world. So, one of the things that we talked about is there is stress out there. You look at it and say, coming off of a loss the previous week, mentally, are you saying, 'Man, we have to win this game to do this,' as opposed to looking at, 'Let's take it one play at a time.' That was the message. I don't know exactly that we did that. I think that there's a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of puckering up. We talk about overcoming adversity through the entirety of it, and that was ample on Saturday evening. How we continue to grow and learn from that is very important. One of the big positives is – and I really took a very keen eye to this when I was grading that film early hours of Sunday morning – in spite of what the score was in that second half, I thought the guys really did play extremely hard. Maybe that's trying to find silver lining, and I understand that. Right now, after coming off a few losses, that's something you have to do, but I was proud of that."
Â
On scoring droughts and not being able to sustain drives…
"It goes to what I said earlier, the inconsistency, because you look at our drives and, on the first drive, we have obviously a turnover on the second play. Then you go back to a particular second drive, and we're in a third and long because we aren't running the ball in early downs well enough. I thought that they (Arizona State) did something a little bit out of the norm there early. On the third down, that first three and out, we had a missed assignment. A guy missed a signal, and he had a missed assignment. It was a good scheme into the defense that we saw that would have given us an opportunity. You saw Avery (Johnson) get flushed back out to the left because one of the guys didn't quite hit his landmark. The consistency guys – I challenged the offensive line. Play call or no play call, we had two opportunities to get, at the end of the day, three and a half feet in two downs, and we didn't execute in those situations. There's poor technique on one, there was a physical issue on the other one. Then you get into that next series, and we have a turnover inside the 30, which does not even account for the 2-of-5 in the red zone because that's not in the red zone, then a drive that we didn't finish in the red zone. I think that was the entirety of the first half right there. Part of it is settling in, being more consistent with a run game. I have to do a better job of maybe getting some things a little bit more out on the perimeter, which you saw us looking to do. That's probably where I see it, and Coach (Klieman) touched on it – and I couldn't agree with him more – some of our inability to run the football early. I thought we figured some things out there towards the latter part of the second quarter and then in the second half, but at that point, because of the situation, you're down 24-0, and that makes it tough."
Â
On what he wants to see from the offense on Saturday…
"I want to see the execution. I want to see discipline, and I want to see the execution. That's the biggest thing right now that we're lacking. Whether it's holding onto the ball, ball security, whether it's running the right route, whether it's using proper technique up front. Those are all things that are 100% within our control. They make a hell of a play on the pick, a tipped ball, those things happen. You go out and get beat, those things happen. That's life, that's the game of football. I want to see the execution. I want to see guys flying around, cutting it loose, playing free and executing at a high level. And I'm responsible. I'm responsible for those things that are burning us right now, and they're getting exposed. That's what I want to see come Saturday night."
Â
JOE KLANDERMAN, DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR
On the Cincinnati offense…
"They run the ball really well. They have two really good running backs, a quarterback that runs, and they will run him. They complement that with a good naked, play action pass game with some talented receivers outside. They do a really good job offensively, schematically. I think they're just sound in what they do. They have a tight end that can stretch you and catch the ball, and they have a RPO game to complement that as well. So, they just keep you off balance a little."
Â
On why Arizona State was able to connect on deep throws…
"Third down was the problem. We just weren't able to get off the field on third down. We've been pressuring a little bit on third down, and that's been a very efficient thing for us. If you looked at the numbers all year, we've been excellent there, and we just weren't on Saturday. We had four third-down pressures, and one of them hit and got the ball thrown away; one was just an outstanding blitz that came clean and couldn't hit it any faster, but the quarterback just drifted to 20 yards deep and threw a ball up and caught an 11-yard pass on third and 10. It's frustrating. Two times we fell down – one time fell down after the ball had been caught. It would have been close on the sticks, and then we were third and 11 on the first series of the game, we just simply fell down with one of our best coverage people. So, I've got to do a better job of putting those guys in better situations. Those are situations that we've won all year, and we just weren't winning them on Saturday. Part of it is the receiver, No. 0 (Jordyn Tyson) was a really good player. I don't say we underestimated him, but we probably didn't pay him the attention that maybe we would have paid a couple other guys throughout the course of the year. Maybe that was a miscalculation on our part. But, we've got to do a better job on third down, getting ourselves off. We're fighting our butts off to get in those situations, and then we don't win. That's frustrating."
Â
On what the seniors mean to him…
"When we got here, those weren't our guys. They became our guys, but they were guys that were recruited by other people. These are guys that we brought in, and some of them have earned their way onto this roster. You think of Austin Moore, and you think of Brendan Mott and guys that kind of snuck in through the back door, so to speak. They've changed this culture. How they've evolved over time, I just think of Austin Moore's journey kind of being in the shadow, kind of being the second-fiddle guy to Daniel Green, and then the transformation that he went through a year ago when Daniel Green had his career end really suddenly. Him taking over that leadership role, and then him having the courage or competitiveness to come back after last year didn't finish the way we wanted it to finish. Guys like that just mean the world. The guys that came along the way, the Marques Sigles, the guys that have meant so much to this program that didn't start here, may not have originated here, but they become K-State. We've got to have everyone on board for those guys because those guys mean a lot to me, personally, and they mean a lot to this program."
Â
On the defenses mental state…
"We have a lot of competitors. We talk a lot about how we never let our circumstances dictate how we show up. It's frustrating circumstances right now, so we're really being tested in that ethos right now. I thought our mental state was fine going into Arizona State. I thought we were a little shell shocked early, to be honest. We kind of got off the field on that first drive and got a defensive holding on Damian Ilalio, of all people – which I don't know if I saw or didn't see – but that's frustrating. You get them to third and 11 and they convert because we fall down. That's frustrating. Then again, you turn around, and they got the ball again on the 45-yard line, and we three-and-outed them. I thought our guys were ready to play, but it just wasn't our night. I believe that our guys will be ready to play again."
Â
On if opposing offensive lines are paying more attention to Brendan Mott…
"It's hard because we've got a lot of really good rush men. We've got some guys that can get after it. We design pressures and things enough to manipulate protections where he doesn't get some of that stuff. What I will say, as a whole, is people are keeping tight ends in more, people are keeping backs in more against us. We see a lot more max protection stuff than most other teams see. We look at it on Sunday, and a team might not be a max protection team, and lo and behold, they've kept their tight ends in half the time. So, guys are paying respect to our rush, and it's putting a little bit more heat on the coverage when they do that. So, I guess Brendan is certainly a big part of that."
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How to follow the Cats: For complete information on K-State Football, visit www.kstatesports.com and follow the team's social media channels on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook.
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How to follow the Cats: For complete information on K-State Football, visit www.kstatesports.com and follow the team's social media channels on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook.
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