Kansas State Football needs to get back to running the ball
Kansas State football is on a two-game skid and it’s because they’ve gotten away from what made them great. Get back to running the football!
The pressure of making a bowl game is off the Kansas State Wildcats, who have the six wins required to play a 13th game in 2019. The pressure now, however, is can K-State get two more wins in their final two games?
In order to do so, the Wildcats need to get back to what made them great in the first place; Running the football down the opposition’s throat.
In both of the recent losses, the Wildcats failed to do what made them a great team and it cost them winnable games. K-State lost to Texas by a score of 27-24 and lost to West Virginia 24-20. Had the run game amped it up just a little more, Kansas State could have squeaked out a win in both of those games.
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In their loss to West Virginia last week, K-State wasn’t as efficient in the run game as they had been in previous games. They had a total of 122 yards on the ground, which isn’t bad by any means, but not the dominant machine it had been during their winning streak.
James Gilbert had just 60 yards off of 13 carries, which led the team in rushing yards. For the Kansas State Wildcats to get back on track, Gilbert needs to make the most out of his carries.
Even with that less than stellar performance, it didn’t top that of what the run game did (or didn’t do rather) against the Texas Longhorns two weeks ago. In that game, Kansas State had their worst running performance yet, totaling just 51 yards on the ground. Tyler Burns led the Wildcats in rushing that day with 26 off of eight carries and the Longhorns were able to shut down the lethal K-State rushing attack.
Maybe the jury is out on how to prevent the Wildcats from doing a lot of damage on the ground, but running the football is what made this team so good in the first place. Forcing Skylar Thompson to throw rather than run the ball or hand it off to his teammates isn’t this team’s bread and butter.
If Kansas State football runs the ball constantly in these next two games, they should have a very good chance to win. Texas Tech surrenders an average of 168.2 rush yards per game and that presents a good match-up for this team on Saturday.
Run. The. Football.