Kansas State kept calling the same play against OSU. Here’s why it worked so well
When Will Howard rolled out of the pocket and found Jax Dineen for a 13-yard gain in the first half of Kansas State’s loss to Oklahoma State last weekend, seemingly every member of the Wildcats’ coaching staff liked what they saw.
Offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham dialed up a different variation of the play moments later for a 16-yard pass to Dineen and then kept going back to it throughout the remainder of the game.
Turns out, Messingham had even bigger things in mind.
Howard, a freshman quarterback, ended up targeting Dineen, a sophomore fullback, five times on underneath routes against the Cowboys for four catches and 35 yards. And it looked to all the world that he was getting ready to throw another pass Dineen’s way in the fourth quarter ... until Howard caught the defense off guard by looking downfield for tight end Samuel Wheeler, who was uncovered.
With OSU defenders focusing on Dineen near the line of scrimmage, Howard easily connected with Wheeler for a 58-yard gain that went down as the Wildcats’ longest passing play of the game, by a wide margin. The next closest was a 25-yarder to Phillip Brooks.
That alone made it a memorable play. But there is also an interesting story behind how K-State coaches set up up the big gain to Wheeler.
“There was a play we threw to Jax in the first half where Jax got pushed out of bounds and Sammy was open on the same play,” K-State coach Chris Klieman said. “I think we kind of put it in our memory bank to say that we need to go back to that. We came back to it at the right time. We anticipated Sammy being open.”
The only disappointing thing about the play: Wheeler, a sophomore from Lenexa, suffered a fractured clavicle at the end of his run and was lost for the remainder of the season.
K-State coaches anticipated a big play from Wheeler last week. The Wildcats began setting him up for one the moment they completed that first pass from Howard to Dineen.
K-State had previously utilized its fullback mostly as a blocker in previous games, but with starting tight end Briley Moore sidelined with a back injury and defenses beginning to key on star running back Deuce Vaughn, the Wildcats decided it was time to expand Dineen’s role.
That strategy paid off. After faking a handoff and rolling out of the pocket on a bootleg, Oklahoma State’s defense lost track of Dineen in the flats and Howard found him for some easy gains.
The only thing that prevented those plays for going for bigger yardage were Dineen inadvertently stepping out of bounds as he turned to run up the sideline. Dineen also dropped one pass.
Oklahoma State wasn’t ready for those plays, and K-State kept going back to it. Messingham was treating it like a child with a shiny new toy.
But there was much more going on in the background of those plays than meets the eye.
Each play began with a receiver going into motion and a fake hand off to a running back. Those two players went on to run routes on side of the field while Dineen sprinted horizontally in the other direction, spreading the defense out as far as possible. All the while, Wheeler was running a deeper crossing route behind Dineen.
The Cowboys covered Wheeler when K-State first went to Dineen, but as the game wore on and the Wildcats kept calling that play defenders crept up near the line of scrimmage and seemed to forget about him.
Just like K-State expected.
“Iowa State did the same thing to Oklahoma State in a game they had at Oklahoma State, so it was a variation of that,” Klieman said. “We were able to catch them on the over route for a big play. It was a good job. We probably could’ve even come back to it a little bit more often.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Kansas State kept calling the same play against OSU. Here’s why it worked so well."