Kansas State football’s bye week a balancing act
MANHATTAN — An open week four games into the season presents an interesting balancing act for coach Chris Klieman and his Kansas State football team.
It comes a bit early for Klieman’s taste, considering the stretch of eight straight games on the other side. But given the Wildcats’ injury woes — not to mention enough on-field execution issues to raise some concerns — he’s not complaining.
The key during the off week leading into a game next Friday night at Oklahoma State (6:30 p.m., ESPN), is resting the right people, getting others some much-needed work and all the while using the extra time to develop younger players for the future.
“You have to try to get healthy,” Klieman said Tuesday during his weekly news conference. “This is our one shot at trying to get ourselves as healthy as we can.
“But we also need continuity with the offensive line. It would be easy to say we should shelve Duff (Christian Duffie). You can’t. He needs continuity with the offensive line. It would be easy to say let’s give Austin Moore and Des (Purnell) all the time off (but) they need continuity with Jake Clifton.”
Duffie, the Wildcats’ super-senior right tackle, missed all of training camp plus the first three games before seeing the field in a limited capacity during last Saturday’s 44-31 home victory over Central Florida. Getting him in sync with the rest of the line may mean less time off for the other starters.
Moore and Purnell have played lights-out at linebacker, but with veteran Daniel Green lost for the season, they are helping bring along true freshman Austin Romaine in the middle. Plus, Clifton, a jack-of-all-trades backup at all three linebacker spots, came back from an injury against UCF and needs extra work.
Then there are those players who are
still nicked up. Quarterback Will Howard shook off a leg injury suffered in a loss at Missouri two weeks ago but will benefit from some extra rest. Running back Treshaun Ward and wide receiver RJ Garcia were out for the UCF game, but Klieman anticipated having them back in practice by the end of this week.
Another receiver, Keagan Johnson, has played in the last three games, but is still not at full strength from a training camp injury.
That said, Klieman has praised his team’s effort on the way to a 3-1 overall start but has been far from satisfied with the Wildcats’ overall performance on the field.
“We need to get a lot better. We have the ability to get a lot better across the board,” he said. “I think across the board, there’s not a position that we’re saying we’ve maxed out or peaked. That’s what we talked about here in the team meeting on Monday.
“We had a really good win over a really good UCF team, but we’re not playing at all to where we think we need to (in order) to be consistent in this league, or to go where we want to go. Everybody’s got to play a little bit better.”
The most glaring weakness on defense so far has been giving up explosive plays, especially in the passing game. Other than the season-opening shutout victory over Southeast Missouri State, the defense has at least one rushing and one pass play of more than 30 yards each game.
“Our front seven is playing really well. We’re playing hard in the secondary,” Klieman said. “We’re making some plays.
“We’re not making probably as many as we would like to make, and still our focus needs to be on eliminating the explosive play.”
The Wildcats entered the bye week ranked No. 8 defensively against the run, but an alarming 108th at stopping the pass.
“They’re all correctable errors. That’s the thing over the last couple of weeks,” Klieman said. “Now for us, we just have to be able to correct them, because I think we have a chance to be a really good defense.
“I think we are a really good rush defense. We’ve just got to complement that now by eliminating the explosives in the passing game.”
In the middle of all that, Klieman added, much of the open week is focused on the future.
“For us, a bye week is continuing to develop guys,” he said. “That’s our number one thing. We’re going to always be a developmental program. That’s why you see a guy like Des Purnell now playing at a high level like he is now, is because he took advantage of those situations.
“(Offensive tackle) Carver Willis took advantage of those situations, (running back) DJ Giddens took advantage of those situations, where you weren’t the main guy and you’ve got a chance to practice our stuff.”