Kansas State Football coming back down to Earth after hot start

By Leigh Oleszczak | Oct 6, 2019

MANHATTAN, KS - OCTOBER 05: Wide receiver R.J. Sneed #13 of the Baylor Bears rushes up field after catching a pass against defensive back Jahron McPherson #31 of the Kansas State Wildcats during the second half at Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium on October 5, 2019 in Manhattan, Kansas. (Photo by Peter G. Aiken/Getty Images) /

Kansas State football is now 0-2 after going 3-0 to start the season under Chris Klieman. The Wildcats went from being ranked heading into conference play, to now sitting winless in conference play.

While the Kansas State Wildcats surprised us all to start the season, we’re now seeing K-State show more of what we expected. The Wildcats lost to Baylor on Saturday by a score of 31-12 and never really inspired a lot of confidence amongst the fans in that game.

The defense surrendered over 150 yards on the ground (though that was most definitely an improvement from a week ago when they gave up nearly 300 yards to one player) and the secondary allowed 268 yards through the air.

On the offensive side of the ball, things weren’t a whole lot better.

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Skylar Thompson went 22 of 34 for 218 yards, one touchdown, and one interception while rushing for just six yards. The run game was effective, gaining 124 yards on the ground (with James Gilbert gaining 94 of those), but not finding the end zone at all.

The 3-0 start was surprising for K-State, but now they’re looking like the team that we sort of expected to see, which is a mixed bag on offense and a defense susceptible to big plays. It wasn’t a terrible outing for either side, but it was still a 19-point loss at home to a Baylor team that honestly deserves more respect. They came into Manhattan and pounded the home team.

K-State won’t hit the road for a long time, as they have a bye week next week, host TCU on the 19th, and host the Oklahoma Sooners on the 26th. It wouldn’t be shocking if those two games resulted in losses and had the Wildcats sitting at 0-4 in Big 12 play.

While this loss was a bummer for the Kansas State Wildcats, we knew this year would be an experimental year for this team in Chris Klieman’s first year. He over performed in the first three weeks and we were all kind of waiting to see how he’d handle the play of Big 12 offenses.

Moving forward, this team needs to obviously work on getting better on both sides of the ball. The run game has been great, but Thompson’s passing game along with the defense’s ability to stop the run and get after the quarterback more (they had just one sack on Baylor’s quarterback on Saturday).

There’s a lot that needs to be improved upon, but Kansas State has a few more winnable games on their schedule this year and they will most definitely take advantage. Klieman will eventually adjust to playing against these electric Big 12 offenses.

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