Close to Turning the Corner

By: D. Scott Fritchen

Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman, in an impassioned and lengthy response to questions regarding the Wildcats' struggles at the midway point of the season, said during his weekly news conference on Monday that, "I've got to be, and I'm going to be, the rock for this team. I'll take all the hits, and all the bullets, and all the things, because that's my job, and I have no problem doing that because if those kids keep laying it on the line, I'll live with the results."

"I know the results are going to change," he continued. "I know it's going to continue to be better."

Klieman's comments came two days after K-State suffered a heartbreaking 35-34 loss at Baylor at McLane Stadium in Waco, Texas, on Saturday. The loss was the latest in a line of one-score defeats that leave the Wildcats, 2-4 overall and 1-2 in the Big 12 Conference, with ground to cover in the league standings as they prepare this week to face TCU, 4-1 and 1-1, in Saturday's 2:30 p.m. kickoff at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

Five of K-State's first six games this season have been decided by one score, as the first three games were by a field goal, and the game at Arizona was a six-point loss. That was prior Saturday's gut-wrenching defeat in which Baylor scored the game's final points on a 53-yard field goal with 31 seconds remaining.

K-State is the only team in the FBS to already have five games decided by one possession. The Wildcats were 4-2 last season when the final margin was eight or less points and they are 1-4 this season.

"We did some good things on offense, on defense, on special teams, but when you lose a tight ballgame, those things get magnified, because you had to make one more play in all those areas," Klieman said in lamenting the loss to the Bears. "When we beat UCF, it kind of gets glossed over that maybe we weren't as good in an area.

"It's a results-based business, and right now we're not getting the results. Some of that we have to fix as coaches, for sure, and I'm in charge of that. Some of that, players have to make plays."

Klieman mentioned that he and the coaching staff spoke about a variety of topics on Sunday and again on Monday morning.

One such topic was defensive tackling.

"It's still not good enough, and we talked about that yesterday and as a staff this morning," Klieman said. "We need to do some things to help us out a little bit defensively."

Another topic was the offense's propensity to throw passes to pass catchers running short-yardage routes in third-and-6 and third-and-7 situations.

"Without a doubt, if you throw those balls – which you're going to have to at times – you have to have the ability to turn your shoulders up, get vertical, make a guy miss because it's still a matchup game. In my opinion, we haven't thrown those very well where the guy has a chance to make a play," Klieman said. "We're catching it by the marker or making a poor route combination or poor read. It's something that we talked about a bunch yesterday with the offense. Some of our underneath mesh stuff, getting the ball toward the sideline and not having the ability to catch it and turn it up.

"If you can catch it and turn it up, good players are going to make plays, but we haven't put ourselves into good enough position to do that. We have to be better there."

Klieman said that quarterback Avery Johnson "played maybe his best game last week against Baylor."

Johnson completed 64.4% of his passes for a career-high 344 yards with two touchdowns and one interception, and he added 10 carries for 72 yards and one score. He threw for the most yards by a K-State quarterback since Jake Waters passed for 400 yards at West Virginia in 2014. But even Johnson's career day was dampened by a costly pick-six during the Bears' fourth-quarter comeback.

"He was on point," Klieman said." He threw the ball really well. Take the one play aside where we don't pick up a pressure (on the pick-six), and he wishes he had that play back, but I mean, he threw some strikes. He's running it when we need him to run it, but we're not going to give it to him 15 times in a designed run game. That's why we went to the two-quarterback stuff. He's the best quarterback for a reason. We're not going to run him 15 times a game.

"Avery's playing at a level in the last few weeks. That's good enough for us to win, but whether it's complementing him a little bit more, making some plays on defense, or finishing drives — I know he's frustrated we didn't finish that drive as well to end the game."

And just when it appeared K-State would put some points on the board as wide receiver Jayce Brown caught a pass and appeared destined to reach the end zone — until a Baylor defender ripped Brown's helmet off. The defender was penalized for a face mask and officials ruled that the play stopped at the spot of the infraction, thus wiping away the Johnson-to-Brown heroics.

Klieman indicated that it was one instance in a myriad of frustrating moments against the Bears.

"All the stuff happens really fast, they mark the penalty off and go for play, but it's no different than the interception or a long pass play, a 53-yard field goal, a blocked 56-yard field goal," Kliemans said.

"It's never really one play."

But all eyes were on a 56-yard field goal attempt by sophomore Luis Rodriguez, who is playing his first season at the Division I level, after the Wildcats were stuck with 5 seconds left in the game.

"Oh, we were out of his range," Klieman said. "I was so mad because I saw the flags that had been limp all day start to blow a little bit, and we knew exactly what they were going to do, because they'd done it against two walk-off field goals that they'd gone against. We knew they were going to put nine guys on the side and push everybody back and get their hands up. Luis had to try and drive the ball, and it was the only way to get it to 56. His range was about 50, and then the wind picked up. But I didn't think we had enough time to take a chance at a quick out. They'd probably had everybody at the sticks."

And so, the Wildcats suffered another narrow loss.

Klieman indicated that the responsibility falls upon everyone.

"You got to make plays, you got to make plays," Klieman said. "That's the bottom line. In one-score games, you have opportunities to make plays, and when you make them, you end up winning those games. It's not one thing. It's a culmination of a lot of things, and it's not one player — it's offense, defense and special teams. In this league, you're going to have a lot of one-score games. That's just the way it is. Last week is an indication that we didn't make those plays."

Klieman believes that the Wildcats are closer to turning the corner. K-State entered the season as one of 10 Power 4 teams to win at least nine games in each of the past three seasons, so the first six games of this regular season have come as a shock to the Wildcats.

Now they have six games remaining in the regular season to win some games.

"Of course, it's stressful," Klieman said. "I'm the leader of this whole thing. Leadership is unifying people; it's not how much we can tear people down. Leadership isn't always sunny and 70 — it's a struggle. I know those kids want to win, we've seen the last two weeks, all of us, how much we've improved in how we're doing thigs with more energy, more physicality. That doesn't guarantee success, but it gives us an opportunity to be successful. I saw a different road team at Baylor than I saw at Arizona. That gives me some belief and confidence that we're doing things the right way.

"Now we just need to make some final adjustments as coaches and as players to get over the hump."

Kansas State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Jayce Brown

Avery Johnson

Luis Rodriguez

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