Kansas State Football: Early Signing Day highlighted by key transfer

While early Signing Day typically surrounds the high school players and JUCO guys picking their future college, Kansas State football’s early Signing Day was highlighted with a running back transferring to Manhattan.

Kansas State football got themselves a legitimate running back on Wednesday when James Gilbert from Ball State announced he’d be headed to Manhattan next season. The even better news is that Gilbert will be eligible to play in 2019!

Gilbert’s best season at Ball State came in 2016 when he rushed for 1,332 yards and 12 touchdowns. With K-State losing Alex Barnes and some other running backs on their roster from a season ago, Gilbert will be put right to work on offense.

Even with Gilbert coming to Manhattan, the Wildcats had 14 guys commit to their program on Wednesday. They didn’t have any four-star recruits and their class was ranked 80th by Rivals.com, but there are still some positives to be had here.

For one, Kansas State added five players from the Sunshine State, including their highest ranked recruit Keenan Garber. Garber is a wide receiver out of Lawrence, which is a big get, considering he chose K-State over in-state rival and hometown school Kansas.

Garber was ranked as the third best wide receiver in the state of Kansas and can hopefully come in and make an impact on offense for the Wildcats. It appeared to be down to either Kansas State or Kansas for Garber and he chose to go outside of Lawrence and attend the “rival” school.

The Wildcats stole another player from Lawrence: Jax Dineen. Rivals.com had Dineen as the top ranked fullback and it’ll be exciting seeing Dineen get into the action this season.

While this wasn’t the most impressive class imaginable, the Wildcats were in a bit of a weird spot this offseason. Bill Snyder retired two weeks ago and Chris Klieman was hired last week to be the future head coach of Kansas State football.

That probably had some recruits skeptical about committing to K-State, but the Wildcats have some decent players in this bunch. The five Kansas players is a good sign, plus KSU nabbed a player from Columbia: Quarterback Jaren Lewis, who chose Kansas State over his hometown Missouri Tigers.

K-State had another quarterback in this class as well, Chris Herron out of Houston, Texas. These two quarterbacks will be important on the depth chart, as Alex Delton transferred out of the program and that leaves Skylar Thompson to handle the signal calling duties for the time being.

We all know Kansas State football is a run-heavy team that likes to play good defense. James Gilbert transferring to Manhattan certainly helps continue that tradition, but can these players come in and make an impact right away for the Wildcats?

I guess we’ll find out next fall.