K-State Q&A: Adrian Martinez, Deuce Vaughn, Missouri football, the KU chant and more
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
The Wildcats are playing Missouri at 11 a.m. on Saturday inside Bill Snyder Family Stadium. We’ve got lots of great topics to cover before then so let’s dive right into your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
The KU chant is essentially a nuclear bomb that no one on Kansas State’s campus knows how to disarm.
And it keeps exploding!
I wrote about K-State band director Frank Tracz refusing to play the Wabash Cannonball more than once during the season opener because of the chant. He is now threatening to stop playing it entirely if fans keep yelling vulgar things about KU. It was maybe the 10th time I have written a story about the Wildcats attempting to kill the chant.
That is nine times too many.
First it was in Sandstorm. Now Wabash. I hope there isn’t a third song that gets the chant treatment, for everyone’s sake.
I don’t have a strong take on the situation.
In a perfect world, K-State fans would stop chanting about KU when the Wildcats are playing a team like South Dakota. But I also realize it is fun to throw jabs at your rival. Similar chants are not uncommon in other corners of college football.
Then again, the chant was awfully loud on Saturday. That’s not something I would want my children hearing all game long. There has to be a better way that leaves everyone happy.
Here’s the best compromise I can think of: Change the chant to “KU sucks.”
If K-State students are dead set on yelling about the Jayhawks that would at least make things PG-13, while still getting the point across.
Losing to Missouri won’t necessarily break Kansas State’s football season, but the Wildcats do need to win this game if they want to have a special year.
I can see K-State rebounding from an early loss to win eight games and possibly get to nine with a bowl victory. There are recent examples of Bill Snyder’s teams (9-4 with a loss to Stanford in 2016 and 9-4 with a loss to Auburn in 2014) doing exactly that.
But any talk of double-digits will end.
I can only find one instance of K-State winning 10 or more games without an undefeated record in nonconference play, and that came in 2003 when the Wildcats unusually played 15 games.
Adrian Martinez is going to have to throw the ball much better than he did against South Dakota in order for K-State to beat Missouri. The Wildcats are also going to have to defend the pass a little bitter, as the Tigers aren’t likely to drop a bunch of passes on Saturday.
With that in mind ...
1. Phillip Brooks. K-State’s best receiver didn’t have a single catch in the opener, and Adrian Martinez only targeted him once. As a Missouri kid, he long ago circled this game on the schedule. I’m thinking he will be ready.
2. KT Leveston. Martinez is going to need time to throw. A good game from K-State’s left tackle would help a lot in that department.
3. Josh Hayes/VJ Payne. Whoever gets the start at free safety is going to need to help defending Mizzou receiver Luther Burden, a former five-star recruit.
First of all, my heart goes out to Taylor Poitier. To suffer a torn ACL in your first game back after spending the previous year recovering from another torn ACL is just awful luck.
Second of all, the good news is K-State has depth at right guard. There won’t be a big drop off from Poitier to Hadley Panzer. The main difference is coaches have labeled Poitier as potentially the second-best lineman on the entire offense. Panzer doesn’t have the same ceiling ... yet.
Poitier is 6-foot-3 and 291 pounds. He has great athleticism for that size. I’ve heard more than a few people say he has “twitchy muscles.”
Panzer is a littler taller at 6-4 and a little heavier at 300 pounds. He might not be quite as athletic, but he knows what he is doing out there and should fill in admirably against Missouri.
Bill Moos once said he would like to renew old Big Eight rivalries with teams like K-State when he was the athletic director. But nothing ever came of that and a new boss is in charge now.
So I’m not sure what the Huskers think about a home-and-home series with the Wildcats.
I doubt watching three players transfer to Manhattan has anything to do with their thinking, though.
It would be great if K-State and Nebraska did agree to play again, though. The Wildcats are the stronger team at the moment, and both fan bases could travel to the games. I miss seeing all those Nebraska fans coming into town. They made it easy for other schools to sellout their games.
I have two suggestions.
1. Bulls on Parade by Rage against the Machine.
2. One more time by Daft Punk.
The second one would really rock if the K-State video folks could make the aliens in the music video purple and play it on the video board.
Khalid Duke has the talent to become an all-conference linebacker, but he still has a long way to go before he reaches that level.
I really like him as a hybrid defensive end/linebacker, but he was playing like a true linebacker against South Dakota. That will take some getting used to. He is good at rushing the quarterback and stuffing the run. He isn’t quite as good at covering receivers.
I’m partial to Deuce Vaughn’s block, because that isn’t something you would expect from a 5-foot-6 running back.
He deserves at least half the credit for Malik Knowles breaking free for a 75-yard touchdown run on the first play of the season.
But his pregame study is also off the charts. I wrote about it in my most recent feature story on him. He watches more video (why do so many still call it film?) and takes better notes than anyone in college football.
Deuce Vaughn is already a lock. I think Dalton Risner is also a good bet. So is Skylar Thompson, assuming he wins multiple NFL MVP awards with the Miami Dolphins.
This story was originally published September 9, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "K-State Q&A: Adrian Martinez, Deuce Vaughn, Missouri football, the KU chant and more."