Why Chris Klieman expects Kansas State to be more aggressive on defense this season
It was hard to imagine a better debut than what Kansas State’s defense accomplished against Stanford last September.
Chris Klieman spent the majority of his offseason helping the Wildcats transition away from their standard formation and surprised the Cardinal with a new look that featured three defensive linemen, three linebackers and five defensive backs. The result was near perfection. K-State won its season-opener 24-7 while holding its opponent to 233 yards.
The Wildcats stayed with their 3-3-5 the rest of the year and won eight games while holding teams to an average of 21 points and 344.8 yards per game. They had some off weeks against Big 12 foes, but both of those numbers were strong enough to rank in the top half of the conference.
Pretty good, right?
Well, yes and no. Looking back at the season in its entirety, Klieman now thinks the Wildcats could have done more. He would like for that to change.
“We’re staying with the three down, so that gave us the opportunity this offseason to do some professional development with our staff to go to different places with what we are running,” Klieman said. “We were pretty vanilla, we thought, last year with our three down and we need to probably be a little bit more aggressive and add a few more wrinkles.”
Eli Huggins likes the sound of that.
Good as K-State was on defense in most games last season, breaking in a new system was difficult. Defensive linemen like Huggins had the most to learn. It took him most of the year to feel like he mastered his responsibilities playing in the middle of the Wildcats’ defensive front.
“It was hard,” Huggins said. “We were running a completely different defense last year, so we kind of had to dial it back a little bit just just to be safe. But I think with all these guys we’ve got here coming back, having a year in the system, we’re going to know the defense so much better. I think we’ll be able to open it up compared to last year.”
That could mean anything from more blitzes to more complicated coverage schemes and other tactics that can keep an offense off balance.
Klieman won’t say exactly what he has in store for future opponents. But, much like last offseason, he has put lots of thought into the subject behind the scenes.
K-State does seem to have the right personnel to play more aggressive this season. On top of Huggins, the Wildcats return Felix Anudike-Uzomah, Nate Matlack, Daniel Green, Jaylen Pickle, Khalid Duke, Ekow Boye-Doe and Julius Brents.
With that many returners, “vanilla” should no longer be in Klieman’s vocabulary.
“We have the personnel to be really good,” Green said. “Our preparation is going to be key, but I think we got a lot of that down last season. Most of us are back and we’re all bought in. It’s time for us to do something special.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2022 at 10:09 AM with the headline "Why Chris Klieman expects Kansas State to be more aggressive on defense this season."