Prove It to Ourselves

PHOENIX, Ariz. - Chris Klieman watched as six Kansas State team captains sat around a ballroom at the Camelback Inn at the media day event ahead of the Rate Bowl understanding this was probably last time they'd sit together in the same room again.

Emotions didn't fly, at least on the outside, but Klieman knows fully the journey and trials and tribulations to reach this point, as the Wildcats, 8-4, face Rutgers, 7-5, in a 3:30 p.m. kickoff Thursday in the Rate Bowl at Chase Field here in Phoenix.

He'd like the Wildcats to send the seniors out with one more win — a win that could also infuse some momentum into a talented squad for 2025.

"We want to send these seniors out the right way," Klieman said. "There are a lot of guys that are going to play in this game that played a ton of football for us. And there are some guys that haven't had the opportunity, and we need to see how much they've progressed.

"How much better are they going to be in another eight months when we get this thing kicked off again?"

K-State is one of just nine Power 4 schools to win at least eight games in each of the last four seasons and is tied for 16^th in the FBS in making 25 bowl appearances since 1993.

The Rate Bowl is the only bowl that pits the Big 12 against the Big Ten.

K-State will look to bounce back after losing three of its final four regular season games, including a regular season-ending 29-21 loss at Iowa State. Rutgers, which endured a four-game losing streak midway through the season, finished out winning three of its final four contests.

"They're a really good team," 16^th-year Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano said. "Some of the games that they lost easily could've or should've been wins. When you look at them, this is quite a formidable opponent."

Klieman is the first head coach to take K-State to a bowl game in five of his first six seasons. Subtract the COVID-ridden 2020 campaign and the Wildcats have done nothing but go to the postseason.

Why, just a year ago, Klieman and a freshman quarterback named Avery Johnson took a bite out of a car-sized Pop-Tart following a 28-19 bowl win over NC State.

Now Johnson could become the first quarterback in K-State history to lead the Wildcats to a bowl victory in each of his first two seasons.

"Really, I'm just a competitor," Johnson said. "It doesn't matter what it is, I just want to win. The biggest thing is just sending these seniors out the right way. You don't want to send them out with a bad taste in their mouth. Getting a win would mean a lot."

The 6-foot-2, 192-pound Johnson is just one of two Power 4 quarterbacks — the other one is Alabama's Jalen Milroe — to enter bowl season with at least 2,500 passing yards and 525 rushing yards during the regular season.

Meanwhile, K-State wide receiver Jayce Brown averages 18.17 yards per catch, which ranks eighth in the FBS and first in the Big 12 among those with at least 40 receptions this season.

However, the matchup that initially highlighted Thursday's meeting won't happen, as K-State junior running back DJ Giddens announced last week that he was entering the NFL Draft, and Rutgers senior running back Kyle Monangai has opted not to play in the contest but will be on the sideline helping coach the running backs.

Giddens finished his career third all-time with 3,087 rushing yards and 23 touchdowns. A semifinalist for the 2024 Doak Walker Award, he ranked 12 nationally with 1,343 rushing yards, and he set the K-State record in averaging 6.55 yards per rushing attempt.

Johnson is high on returning running backs sophomore Dylan Edwards and redshirt freshman Joe Jackson.

Edwards, a native of Derby, Kansas, and transfer from Colorado, has 671 yards and four touchdowns over his two-year career, including a 350-yard, three-touchdown effort this season. He also has 405 career receiving yards and five scores. Jackson has 32 carries for 177 yards and one touchdown during his first full season on the field.

"Just the absence of DJ Giddens, Joe has done a really good job of picking up where DJ left off," Johnson said. "We use Dylan a lot this year, but I think Dylan is going to be another guy to watch out for. He's so explosive with the ball in his hands and such a talented player. We ask him to do a lot of things, and he never complains. He's getting thrown around in a lot of different ways in the offense, and he's picked up on it and has done a really good job in bowl prep.

"I'm really excited for him because he's a hard worker and he deserves every bit of it."

The 5-foot-9, 209-pound Monangai had 3,221 career yards, second most in Rutgers history. His 1,279 yards this season ranked 15^th in the FBS. His 14^th-career 100-yard game came when he rushed for 129 yards on a career-high 31 carries and a touchdown in a 41-14 win at Michigan State to end the regular season.

"He's decided not to (play), which I fully understand," Schiano said. "Kyle's done so much for Rutgers. Excited for his future. He's been awesome. He's helped coach, he's been at every meeting. If you didn't know it, you'd think he was playing. That's just the way that he's prepared. But that's Kyle. If he's going to do something he's going to do it all out."

With Monangai out, eyes will go to Antwan Raymond, who had 82 carries for 344 yards and five touchdowns, while Samuel Brown had 40 carries for 201 yards and three scores.

Rutgers has a steady quarterback in Athan Kaliakmanis, who is 199-of-363 passing for 2,459 yards with 17 touchdowns and six interceptions. He'll test a K-State defensive secondary that has had an up-and-down season. Junior cornerback Jacob Parrish opted to go pro.

Dymere Miller is a 5-foot-11, 184-pound senior who leads the Scarlet Knights with 57 catches for 731 yards, the most receiving yards by a Rutgers player since 2015. He had 11 catches for 131 yards at USC, which marked the most receptions by a Rutgers player in a game since 2011.

Ian Strong is a 6-foot-3, 211-pound sophomore with 38 catches for 571 yards and a team-high five touchdowns with every score coming inside the red zone.

"They're not going to change what they do, in my mind, and what they do successfully, which is some of their wide zone, wide stretch, and some of their misdirection on the split zone," Klieman said. "They're still going to want to run the football. You've got to keep packing these guys in and bring more people to the party because they're really physical up front on the offensive line, and they're bigger than our defensive line. For us, we're going to have to move a little bit because we can't just stand stagnant there. We'll get gobbled up with their size advantage.

"We have to win outside, and it's going to be a big challenge for Keenan Garber, for Zashon Rich, for Justice James, for Donovan McIntosh. It's going to be a challenge for those guys because we can't sit and double those guys the whole time, because I don't know if we'll hold up in the run."

To find success, Klieman believes K-State will likely need to run the ball — with its quarterback.

"Defensively, they're really physical at the point of attack," Klieman said. "They really count on their corners being able to shut down the outside guys because they're long, physical, and say we're going to commit eight or nine guys based on the formation to say you're not running the football at us. That's why our quarterback run game has to be a factor. I don't want to run the kid 25 times, but we've got to run him some to open some things up.

"We've got to move people around on offense so that it's not a stagnant look, because if it's a stagnant look, they're physical, they're well-coached, and they're going to know what the heck to do within the frame of their defense. So, motion and shift and trading will be a big deal."

This will mark the Scarlet Knights' second-straight bowl appearance. They seek eight wins for the first time since 2014. They haven't won back-to-back bowl games in 15 years.

K-State sixth-year senior linebacker Austin Moore has been to plenty of bowls. He isn't ready to think about this being his last one in a K-State uniform.

"I'm just so grateful to have had the opportunity to play for Coach Klieman and play for Kansas State," Moore said. "But my focus is really going to be on the game and winning the game. I think it's probably going to hit me after it's over — hopefully celebrating a win."

Which could benefit the Wildcats as they head into 2025.

"Nothing to prove to everybody else but ourselves that we are what we say we are," Johnson said. "The margin of victory in college football is so small these days. We want to be able to go out and prove that we're a talented football team and go out and win another football game and end the season with nine wins.

"Obviously, we want to be in the Big 12 Championship and play in the College Football Playoff, but we just want to go out and get one more win."

Players Mentioned

Jayce Brown

Justice Clemons

Dylan Edwards

Keenan Garber

DJ Giddens

Joe Jackson

Avery Johnson

Donovan McIntosh

Austin Moore

Jacob Parrish

Zashon Rich

Kansas State University Athletics