‘We have to be better’: Wildcats left searching for answers after Iowa State defeat
Of all the ugly statistics that surfaced following Kansas State’s 33-20 defeat against Iowa State on Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, one clearly stood out from the rest.
Chris Klieman has lost eight consecutive conference games.
If owning a winning record against Oklahoma is his biggest accomplishment since taking over as head coach for the Wildcats, overseeing this Big 12 losing streak is his biggest failure.
The first five defeats occurred last season with a backup quarterback at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, so some of those results can be easily explained. The previous three defeats all happened this season against No. 12 Oklahoma State, No. 4 Oklahoma and Iowa State, perhaps the three best teams in the Big 12. So maybe they are also understandable.
But when you add it all together, a troubling trend appears to be brewing in Manhattan. K-State (3-3, 0-3 Big 12) turned heads and climbed into the top 25 when it opened this season with three straight victories, but it has floundered against stronger competition. Its dreams of competing for a league championship already seem over.
Losing at home to Iowa State for the first time since 2004 was enough to make K-State players do some soul-searching.
“Everybody on our team needs to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, what more can they give, what more can they do?” K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson said. “Even myself, everybody on the team. We feel like there is more we can do, there is more we can give. We have to execute better, we have to find those inches. There are a handful of plays in a game that are dictating the outcome, and we are not making those plays.”
K-State needs to improve the most on defense.
The Wildcats have developed a bad habit of making opposing quarterbacks look like Heisman Trophy contenders.
Saturday was Brock Purdy’s turn.
He became the latest Big 12 quarterback to light it up against K-State, following Oklahoma State’s Spencer Sanders (22 of 34 for 344 yards and two touchdowns) and Oklahoma’s Spencer Rattler (22 of 25 for 243 yards and two touchdowns). Purdy played a near perfect game by completing 22 of 25 passes for 208 yards and a touchdown.
Add it all up, and Big 12 quarterbacks are completing 78.5% of their passes against K-State.
That’s ... not good.
“Well, they are three pretty good quarterbacks,” Klieman said. “We’ve just got to make some plays in man coverage. We’ve got to be able to get off and rush the passer so we can get people in his face. It’s a little difficult when we don’t have our best couple of pass rushers out there. But, bottom line, that’s the hand we’re dealt. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board and find some ways to rush the passer and we’ve got to be able to play a little bit better man coverage.”
Purdy has been mistake prone for the Cyclones this season. Turnovers and misfires cost them dearly in losses against Iowa and Baylor. K-State was hoping to exploit his inconsistent play, but he didn’t have any problems carving up the Wildcats’ secondary.
K-State tried to rattle Purdy with blitzes, but he was able to evade that pressure and find his receivers.
When he wasn’t throwing, he was handing the ball off to Breece Hall. Hall also hurt the Wildcats by rushing for 197 yards and two touchdowns.
It appeared as though K-State had made huge strides on defense when it dominated the line of scrimmage against Stanford, Southern Illinois and Nevada with a new 3-3-5 formation. But injuries to defensive ends Khalid Duke and Bronson Massie have crippled the team’s defensive line, and Big 12 teams have lots of experience playing against teams that use the 3-3-5.
Felix Anudike-Uzomah said K-State players were routinely out of position against Iowa State and occasionally surprised by how the Cyclones blocked certain plays, such as a 75-yard touchdown run by Hall on the game’s opening series. He said the Wildcats badly miss Duke and Massie.
When they were on the field, K-State could pressure the quarterback without blitzing. On Saturday, they blitzed all game long and didn’t sack Purdy a single time, though Eli Huggins did register one QB hurry.
“We have to be better,” Anudike-Uzomah said.
The good news for K-State is that the schedule is about to get easier. The Wildcats will play Texas Tech on the road next week and then three straight conference opponents that don’t currently have a winning record -- TCU, Kansas and West Virginia.
A Big 12 losing streak could easily become a Big 12 winning streak.
But the Wildcats will need to play better in all phases for that to happen. They only gained 342 yards against Iowa State. Thompson threw an interception and K-State got little on special teams.
Those are fixable issues. No one on the team thinks Klieman’s conference losing streak will continue much longer once those problems are addressed.
K-State running back Deuce Vaughn said the team’s panic meter is currently on “zero.”
“We have had chances to win all of the last three games,” Vaughn said. “Either we didn’t make a play or the ball didn’t bounce our way. It’s one of those things that you kind of have to take on the chin and we feel like we have a really good football team.”
This story was originally published October 17, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘We have to be better’: Wildcats left searching for answers after Iowa State defeat."