From The Couch – K-State Offense Struggles In Loss To Oklahoma State
K-State lost to Oklahoma State 29-21 last night in Stillwater in one of the more frustrating games I’ve ever seen the Wildcat football team play. K-State was down 26-7 at one point in the third quarter and, despite terrible quarterback play by Will Howard, had a chance to drive to tie the game late in the fourth quarter only to have Howard’s pass attempt batted down on a fourth down play. The Wildcat defense only gave up one touchdown to the Cowboys, who were forced to kick six field goals, five of which were successful while one was blocked.
There is a lot of blame to go around. K-State head coach Chris Klieman took the blame, Will Howard took the blame, and other players took the blame. I will unpack what went wrong for the Wildcats on a Friday night in Stillwater.
“I want to congratulate Oklahoma State. I thought they played well. I knew they were going to play well. They beat us tonight. Beat us at the line of scrimmage quite a bit.”…K-State head coach Chris Klieman, post-game
JM: I didn’t think Oklahoma State played particularly well. The did rush for 174 yards, a 4.4 yard per carry average, but they only scored one offensive touchdown. The touchdown was on their first drive of the game and it was quite obvious that every play on that drive was scripted for Oklahoma State quarterback Alan Bowman. Bowman isn’t the second coming of Patrick Mahomes. He was a pedestrian 19 of 35 passing for 235 yards. I think K-State peed the bed in this one.
“A couple of things really stick out. We have turned the ball over, which we can’t do. We don’t create any turnovers on defense, so it’s not like we’re getting any short fields for the offense. We give up too many big plays on defense and we’re not getting enough explosive plays on offense.”…K-State head coach Chris Klieman, post-game
JM: Klieman sounded like Captain Obvious with this quote. Can’t win many football games playing like this.
“We’re not a very good football team right now.”…K-State head coach Chris Klieman, post-game
JM: They sure aren’t. A performance like last night’s make me question my 9-3 preseason prediction for this team.
“But it starts with me. I’ve got to be a better head coach. Assistants have to put the kids in a position to be a little bit more successful.”…K-State head coach Chris Klieman, post-game
JM: Klieman accepted the blame, but also wanted to call out his assistant coaches in the same breath. I haven’t seen this much from coach Klieman.
“Will (Howard)’s got to play better, obviously.”…K-State head coach Chris Klieman, post-game
JM: This might have been Will Howard’s worst game as a Wildcat. He was terrible passing the ball. Inaccurate all night long, he finished the game 15 of 34 passing for 152 yards with a touchdown and three interceptions. He looked lost.
“If you asked me, I’d say, this one’s on me but, obviously, I can’t put it all on myself. But I take the brunt of the blame for what went on, on offense. That is what it is. It’s on me. I have to be better. My promise is that I’m going to work my tail off to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”…K-State quarterback Will Howard, post-game
JM: I have watched a lot of football in my life. Sometimes your quarterback has an off day. Remember Hall-of-Famer Michael Bishop getting benched for Jonathan Beasley against Texas Tech? He was only benched for that game and the next week he was back to his dominating self. I understand that Chris Klieman wants to save freshman Avery Johnson’s red shirt, but Klieman’s job is to win football games. If you have a reliable back-up quarterback, sometimes you need to go with that option. Avery Johnson should have been put into the game last night. Period.
“We’ve got to be better, and we’ve got to be better as coaches.”…K-State head coach Chris Klieman, post-game
JM: This was the second time in the post-game press conference that Klieman said “we’ve” got to be better as “coaches.” Plural. I’d like to know specifically which coaches he was not happy with, but the media didn’t drill down on this comment.
“If we score there and get the two-point conversion, we’re going to go in, score, kick the PAT and win the game. I didn’t see the play, but they said we had a chance, and we probably could have made that play to make it 29-23. We’ve been in these situations a couple times on the flip side of it… We thought long and hard about it. It wasn’t just a random ‘hey, what do you think here?’ I’ve thought long and hard about that if we got that situation. I wish we would have converted because we look like geniuses then, and all of a sudden, we get a score and kick the PAT and walk out of there. But we didn’t and probably didn’t deserve to win that game.”…K-State head coach Chris Klieman
JM: K-State was down 29 to 15 when they scored a touchdown to cut the lead to 29 to 21. Klieman decided to try a two-point conversion. The strategy is to try and win the game in regulation. The attempt was executed well, but the pass was dropped in the end zone by RJ Garcia. It took the wind out of the Wildcats’ sails after cutting the lead to one score. Now they would need a touchdown and two-point conversion to tie the game. It’s added pressure that didn’t need to be there. I would have kicked the extra point and kept the momentum. If you want to go for two on the next touchdown, I would have been okay with that. To do it in this situation made no sense to me.
“The biggest thing is we threw the pick-six to end the first half. I didn’t want to take a knee, that wasn’t going to do us any good.”…K-State head coach Chris Klieman
JM: Another questionable decision by Klieman. He said taking a knee wasn’t going to do any good? Well what good was throwing a pick-six there? Going into halftime down six points versus down 13 points is HUGE! If they were on their own 40-yard line I can see being aggressive there, but they were on their own 25-yard line. This pass was a miscommunication between Howard and Phillip Brooks. Brooks went up field and Howard threw the ball to a spot that he thought Brooks was going to be. If this was a one-score game going into halftime, the final outcome may have been different.
“You never want to lose, especially on the road to a really good Oklahoma State team like that, but everybody just wants to, and needs to, give more. I have to be a better leader and bring these younger guys along.”…K-State safety Kobe Savage, post-game
JM: Something I’ve noticed about this team is that the coaching staff tells the players that every opponent is a “really good” team. Every player in the post-game press conference says it when interviewed by the media. Oklahoma State is not a “really good” team. They lost 33-7 to South Alabama in the same stadium just a couple of weeks ago.
“Not a good feeling. I feel like we came in here and listened to the outside noise a little bit too much. And they hadn’t put really good stuff on film. We thought we were a better team than them. I still think that we’re, when we’re at our best, we’re a better team than them. But we didn’t play our best, and they played well tonight. They played better than us.”…K-State quarterback Will Howard, post-game
JM: So the team was unprepared and over confident? Got it.
“That was fun. That was a good college football game. A lot of excitement. Two great football teams. Great atmosphere.”…Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, post-game
JM: “Two great football teams?” Guess he wasn’t watching the same game that I was.
It wasn’t all bad for Will Howard. He had a great long run that was initially called a touchdown before a review showed that he was down just short of the goal line…..
JM: Treshaun Ward returned and had this nice touchdown run. I agree that the celebration penalty flag was bogus.
JM: K-State has a lot of work to do this week in preparation to travel to Lubbock to play Texas Tech next Saturday night. The game will be broadcast at 6:00 on FS1. Let’s hope they can turn things around.
