K-State Q&A: Will Chris Klieman and the Wildcats beat their over/under win projection?
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
No need for an elaborate introduction this week. Let’s dive right into your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
Three? Not that I’m aware of.
I don’t usually provide gambling advice or suggest to my readers that they should definitely place a bet on any type of point spread or futures prop (I’m wrong way too often to do that), but I’m going to step outside my comfort zone and do exactly that right here at the top of this week’s mailbag.
If you know of a sports book that currently lists Kansas State’s win total for the 2021 football season at three, I recommend that you run (don’t walk) to your car or computer and place a large bet on the over.
Do it right now. Seriously, get going. I will wait. Put down a $100 for me while you’re at it. That’s free money!
Most of the oddsmakers I have seen are listing K-State’s over/under win total at 5 1/2. I checked at about a dozen different sites hoping to find some other odds but came up empty.
The preseason consensus for K-State is 5 1/2. Perhaps you confused K-State with KU, but the Jayhawks’ over/under is only one. So, like I said, there is a ton of value in betting K-State to win more than three games next season, if you can actually find that somewhere.
Now, as for the actual over/under number, that is a little trickier. My first instinct is to lean over, because the Wildcats are getting Skylar Thompson back as one of the most experienced quarterbacks in all of college football and they won eight games the last time he was healthy for a full season.
Deuce Vaughn is also back, along with a more experienced offensive line. On defense, the Wildcats added some valuable transfers and retained some quality “super seniors.” A winning season could definitely be on the horizon.
Most fans would be very disappointed with only five wins.
I probably would have set K-State’s over/under at 6 or 6 1/2.
Then again, the schedule isn’t exactly easy in 2021. Playing Stanford, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Iowa State in the first half of the year won’t be a picnic.
And K-State hasn’t won a football game since Oct. 24. Thompson is a good quarterback, but I would use a different word to describe the receivers he will be targeting in the passing game. I also have serious questions about K-State’s depth on defense. It won’t be pretty if the wrong starter goes down with an injury.
Next season feels like one of the most unpredictable dice rolls I can remember for a K-State football team. If Malik Knowles and another receiver step up for Thompson and the defense improves, I can see as many as nine wins. Beat Stanford in the opener and knock off Oklahoma for the third straight year, and the Wildcats could have a very good season.
On the other side of the spectrum, I see enough holes on the roster for only four or five wins and another season without a bowl if things go poorly. A 2-4 start would leave little margin for error during the second half of the season.
It’s probably wise to aim right in the middle of those extremes and expect six or seven victories.
In any case, more than three victories seems like a given.
First off, let’s run through Kansas State’s newest four football staffers.
- Brian Lepak - Senior offensive quality control, assistant director of recruiting.
- Will Burnham - Special teams quality control.
- Tyler Foster - Offensive analyst.
- David Orloff - Defensive analyst.
Lepak is probably the most accomplished member of the new staffers, given that he has previous experience as a run-game coordinator at Southern and as a graduate assistant at Oklahoma. He has the look of an up-and-comer who will join a FBS coaching staff in the near future.
But the other three all have varying amounts of experience elsewhere that should only help the Wildcats moving forward.
To clear one thing up: Only two of the analysts are filling brand new positions. Lepak and Burnham are both replacing quality control coaches that left K-State during the offseason for other opportunities. How Burnham fills in for Stanton Weber could be an underrated story line next year, given how well Weber had the Wildcats looking on special teams the past two seasons.
So K-State replaced two spots and added two new staffers to its support staff.
That’s never a bad thing.
The Wildcats still lag behind many bigger programs in this area, as teams like Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma and Texas have small armies of analysts working for their football teams. But this is a step in the right direction.
Any help these four new staffers can provide in recruiting will help in that area. During the final years under Bill Snyder, the only staffer working full-time on K-State recruiting was Taylor Braet. Now he is getting help from Hank Jacobs, Chuck Lillie, Taylor Godinet and, presumably, at least some of these new staffers.
That is a big change. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact that has on recruiting.
Assigning one of those employees to exclusively monitor the transfer portal and identify potential players there sounds like a good idea to me. More likely, K-State will use an all-hands-on-deck approach there. But transfers have become a very important part of college football. No doubt.
There are also certain teams that are notoriously good at learning signals, anticipating plays and coming up with new schemes of their own from one week to the next. Those teams tend to have big support staffs. Maybe K-State can gain an edge in the strategy department next season.
We’ll have to wait and see. I don’t want to make too big of a deal about this. It’s certainly better to have more people on staff than less, but K-State’s primary coaching staff will still do most of the heavy lifting.
The most iconic BBQ destination in the DFW metroplex is Pecan Lodge. If I could eat anywhere in north Texas before the K-State/Stanford game on Sept. 4, that would be my pick.
Go with family or a few friends and order “The Trough.” Thank me later.
The only down side to Pecan Lodge is it’s in Dallas, which is not exactly close to AT&T Stadium. It also has long lines and can be expensive.
Hard Eight is a nice alternative. Former Topeka scribes Kevin Haskin and Ken Corbitt turned me onto this joint a few years ago, and I’ve dined there many times since. They have a few locations across the area, and ordering is super easy. The line starts at the smoker, you point at what you want and then you eat it. They smoke their brisket slow, barely above 200 degrees. It takes forever to cook, but it tastes great.
If you’re staying in Fort Worth, think about giving Heim Barbecue a try.
I am also a big fan of Rudy’s, even though it’s too much of a chain restaurant for some. But you can do a lot worse and there’s never a huge line.
I actually wrote a feature story about this topic last season. You should read it!
It’s always seemed crazy to me that college basketball coaches dress like they’re trying to impress customers at the Catalina Wine Mixer when they’re actually yelling out instructions to basketball players, who are wearing shorts and sleeveless jerseys.
Football coaches dress like slobs. Soccer coaches (mostly) wear track suits. Baseball managers wear full uniforms, which is very weird to me but at least it’s not formal wear.
After talking to coaches throughout the Big 12, I found out most of them agreed with me. It was much more comfortable to wear pull overs and polo shirts last season than their traditional suits.
Weber said his preference was to keep wearing casual attire on the sidelines, but also admitted a suit could send a nice message at a big game. Perhaps he will mix and match in the future now that the coronavirus pandemic is dying down.
But I expect him to stick mostly with the casual look.
This story was originally published June 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "K-State Q&A: Will Chris Klieman and the Wildcats beat their over/under win projection?."