Stay the Course

By: D. Scott Fritchen

While Kansas State looks to rebound during the second half of its season, TCU head coach Sonny Dykes, who has the Horned Frogs humming with a 4-1 record, is thinking one thing as they prepare to visit Manhattan on Saturday.

"This is a typical Kansas State team that is dangerous," Dykes said.

K-State, 2-4 overall and 1-2 in the Big 12 Conference, has lost three of its last four games, including a heartbreaking 35-34 loss at Baylor last Saturday.

But there's also this: K-State has won five of its last six meetings against TCU. Dykes is 1-2 against K-State as head coach at TCU, which hasn't won in Manhattan since 2017. K-State also beat TCU, 41-3, the last time the teams met on October 21, 2023.

Trends like that tend to stick with a coach.

"We're getting ready to go play against a really good team in a very tough environment, a team we haven't had a lot of success against historically," Dykes said. "They've just been really good. They've been consistently good. Their fans are smart and understand football and appreciate the culture that exists within the Kansas State program. Everybody is united. That's what has made that place successful through the years.

"You look at what Coach Snyder built there, and they just did things the right way. Their fans appreciated the attention to detail and work they did, and it's obviously carried over with Coach Klieman with the consistent success he's had. They appreciate kids that play hard and do things the right way and a program that every time they take the field regardless of who they play they have a great opportunity to win. That's what you've gotten from Kansas State through the years."

All four of K-State's losses have been by single digits and by a total of 13 points. TCU's lone loss this season was a three-point defeat on the road at Arizona State.

"They've lost a couple games this year at the very end of games," Dykes said. "They've had some bad things happen to them down the stretch, but this is a typical Kansas State team that is dangerous, well coached, and play hard, and do things the right way — just all the things that give you a chance to win, they do it."

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 in such games this season.

"We have to stay the course," K-State head coach Chris Klieman said. "That's the bottom line. We have to keep fighting, keep battling, and get ready for a really good TCU team coming in here."

K-State standout running back Dylan Edwards was listed as questionable in the initial availability report heading toward Saturday. Edwards saw limited action at Baylor.

K-State offensive coordinator Matt Wells indicated that injuries and having players in and out of the lineup makes game planning difficult.

"Especially when guys are working their butt off to be back, but they're limited during the week (it's tough) and you're trying to get them to Saturday and to be healthy," Wells said. "It makes it really hard because you don't know who you have until Saturday, and even at that, in the middle of the game.

"Being pretty flexible and having a marker ready to change stuff, you have to. We're not the only ones. I know there are a lot of other people, but we've certainly had that. Seems like we're getting a little healthier now, so I'm happy with that."

With Edwards' limited action at Baylor, sophomore Joe Jackson came in and had career highs across the board with 13 carries for 61 yards to go along with five catches for 41 yards. Jackson has 48 carries for 203 yards and one touchdown while starting in three of six games this season.

"I like Joe because of his toughness," Wells said. "He's a mentally tough kid. Everything hasn't always gone his way, and I can attest to that personally. I like that in him. He has a mental toughness, a physical toughness to him, and he's smart. He does a good job. Him being the way he played, it jumpstarted us a little bit. We needed his legs, and we needed Avery Johnson's legs (at Baylor)."

The K-State defense took a big hit this week as it will be without its sack leader in Tobi Osunsanmi on Saturday as well. The 6-foot-3, 250-pound Osunsanmi has played in 36 games over the last four seasons and ranks sixth in the Big 12 with 0.67 sacks per game this season. Osunsanmi leads the team with 4.0 total sacks.

That means other defensive linemen will have to step up in Osunsanmi's place.

"Jordan Allen will have a bigger role now," Klanderman said. "When Ryan Davis got back, Jordan, we shuffled him around a little bit, because he's good enough to be out there, he just hasn't found a home. If Tobi is out for a stretch, then we'll have to park Jordan in a place, which will be good for him, so he can just learn one position. It's going to put more stress on guys like Travis Bates and Cody Stufflebean, who frankly are great players. They're doing a really good job for us. The thing we're going to miss with Tobi is especially when it comes to third down. It'd be great in a game like this where you could just rush him. That's his forte. He's a threat in the pass rush game and we'll miss that."

Fighting and battling have been trademarks of K-State football for decades. There appears to be no quit in these Wildcats.

"Man, we're playing for each other, just making sure nobody falls off, or nobody is on one side of the fence," Jackson said. "We're doing this for each other. We've been in this since January. We bled together, cried together, done everything together. We've got to be there for each other and play for each other."

Defensive tackle Uso Seumalo, who returned to play a seventh season, has been a part of consistent success and big victories. K-State entered this season as one of just 10 Power 4 schools to win at least nine games in each of the past three seasons. The Wildcats' 31-28 overtime win against No. 3 TCU to capture the 2022 Big 12 Championship remains a thrilling moment in Seumalo's career.

"I know Coach Klieman wants what's best for us, and I know he doesn't want to be in the situation we're in now," Seumalo said. "He's a winner. He wants to win. Being a part of something like this organization for the past four years, I mean, his work shows for itself.

"I understand he doesn't feel as good about where we are right now, but knowing Coach Klieman, I know he can lead us to where we want to be."

And, of course, that's the win column, but K-State will have its hands full when it meets TCU in Saturday's 2:30 p.m. kickoff at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

One week after facing the No. 1 leading passer in the FBS in Baylor quarterback Sawyer Robertson, K-State prepares for junior Josh Hoover, who ranks No. 6 in the FBS with 303.4 passing yards per game. Hoover, who has thrown 57 touchdowns in 24 career starts, ranks No. 2 nationally with 23 completions of 20-plus yards after leading the Big 12 last season with 60 and ranking No. 5 nationally.

TCU wide receiver Eric McAlister led the nation with 92.3% (36-of-39) of his receptions resulting in a first down last season and now is the only player in the FBS to record at least 750 receiving yards and average at least 18.0 yards per reception in each of the last two seasons.

Another wide receiver, Joseph Manjack IV has caught a pass in 31 straight games, which is the seventh-longest active streak in the country and second-longest among Big 12 players.

"We talked about this dating back to the summer, the amount of talented quarterbacks in this league," Klieman said. "It's a quarterback-driven league and it's a skill player-driven league. I look at what Sawyer has from skill positions and then what Hoover has, and they have so many guys that can beat you, and the guy who's throwing the ball as well is a terrific athlete who can run the ball, but he's throwing the ball really accurate, especially on deep balls. That's the thing that probably scares us the most."

K-State ranks No. 120 in allowing 29 plays from scrimmage to travel at least 20 yards.

"We've given up some explosive plays, and they have an explosive offense that's going to take those shots," Klieman said. "They're playing really well offensively."

Johnson comes off perhaps his best game of the season, as he threw for 344 yards — the most by a K-State quarterback since Jake Waters threw for 400 at West Virginia in 2014 — and two touchdowns, and he rushed 10 times for 72 yards and one touchdown. However, a fourth-quarter pick-six aided Baylor's comeback and dramatic win.

Johnson, the fifth quarterback in K-State history to reach 4,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in a career, currently has 1,110 career rushing yards and averages 5.23 yards on his 212 career rushes, which ranks seventh in K-State history among all players in yards per rushing attempt.

"Four weeks in a row we've played really athletic quarterbacks," Dykes said. "They're all different. You had Kevin Jennings at SMU who could leave the pocket to keep a play alive and throw shot passes, and Arizona State's quarterback wanted to run the football, and Colorado's quarterback was a little bit different, too, and now we have Avery Johnson this week. Avery is best athlete of the bunch. They're all really good athletes, but he's the best runner and the fastest.

"There's going to be more designed quarterback runs than we've faced, particularly inside the red zone and on third down. In critical situations, they're going to run the quarterback. They put the ball into the hands of their best player. He had a quarterback draw go for 35 yards and a touchdown and nobody laid a hand on him. He's just got that kind of big-play speed and ability. That's what he does at a high level."

Five of the last seven meetings between K-State and TCU have been decided by 10 or fewer points. TCU is no stranger to comebacks or close losses this season, either.

Two weeks ago, the Horned Frogs squandered a 17-point lead and saw Jesus Gomez kick a 23-yard field goal with 74 seconds left to lift Arizona State to a 27-24 win in Tempe, Arizona.

Last Saturday, TCU overcame a two-touchdown deficit to beat Colorado 35-21 as Hoover completed an 18-yard touchdown to Manjack IV with 5:44 left in the game to go ahead for good.

"We have to play and understand it's a 60-minute game," Dykes said. "That's just the way this league is, the Big 12, you have to play 60 minutes. Every single game in the league is going to come down to the very end. That was the case for us this last week and certainly the case for K-State and Baylor as well. That's just the way these games are going to be played. We have to handle end-of-game situations really well. We handled them better against Colorado than we did against Arizona State, and that was the difference between winning and losing the game. We have to do the same thing this week.

"We have to weather the storms. We have to keep our eyes down and stay emotionally grounded and continue to grind through things. It's going to be a hard-fought game, and we're going to have to be the team that plays the hardest, and plays most physical, and most disciplined. Those are things K-State has historically hung its hat on."

Kansas State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Jordan Allen

Travis Bates

Ryan Davis

Dylan Edwards

Joe Jackson

Avery Johnson

Tobi Osunsanmi

Uso Seumalo

Cody Stufflebean

Related Videos