What Chris Klieman is saying about K-State’s best football recruiting class in ages
The Kansas State football team signed its highest-rated recruiting class in ages on Wednesday.
K-State coach Chris Klieman welcomed 23 new players to the roster, including 23 high school seniors and three junior-college transfers.
Many of those incoming recruits have been committed to the Wildcats for several months and fans know all about them. Others pledged their allegiances to EMAW nation much more recently. In either case, Klieman was allowed to publicly talk about all of them for the first time after the early signing period began.
Here are five of the most notable things he had to say about K-State’s newest batch of recruits.
K-State’s best recruiting class ever?
The Wildcats checked in at No. 28 nationally with both 247Sports and Rivals in terms of overall recruiting classes this cycle.
Depending on who you ask, it might be the highest rated class ever assembled in Manhattan. That is certainly the case if you only look at the modern classes that have been tracked by recruiting web sites. Ron Prince had a few classes that cracked the top 40. Bill Snyder never approached the top 30 during his second stint as head coach or during the later stages of his original stint.
But K-State brought in so many good players, particularly from junior colleges, in the late 1990s that one of those groups was potentially better on paper than this one.
In any case, this is the best recruiting class that K-State has seen in quite some time. Klieman is excited to see what it can accomplish. So is recruiting coordinator Taylor Braet.
“I think it’s the best class for myself,” Braet said. “I took over recruiting 10 years ago and this would be the best class I think I’ve been a part of.”
Joe Jackson could play early
Klieman made it sound like every single player he signed on Wednesday is oozing with potential that is just waiting to be tapped into after they arrive on campus. But he went out of his way to set high expectations for the lone running back in the 2023 recruiting class.
Joe Jackson, a 5-foot-10 and 195-pound playmaker from Haines City, Florida could make an immediate impact with the Wildcats, depending on what star running back Deuce Vaughn decides to do about his NFL future.
“Joe has got a chance to play early,” Klieman said. “He is an exciting kid who is a speed kid but also an explosive player between the tackles.”
Jackson is a three-star recruit who rushed for 1,143 yards and 20 touchdowns in seven games a senior for his high school team.
If Vaughn declares early for the NFL Draft, Jackson will have a chance to take over as the No. 2 running back right away as a freshman.
High praise for Avery Johnson
Talk of Maize quarterback Avery Johnson starting as a true freshman has quieted since Will Howard led K-State to a Big 12 championship this season, but that doesn’t mean the Wildcats aren’t excited to see what Johnson can do at the controls of their offense at some point in the near future.
Johnson is a four-star recruit and the top rated prospect in the Sunflower State. The Wildcats haven’t landed a player like him in at least 20 years.
So what stands out about him most to Klieman?
“He has got really good arm talent. That is the first thing we look for is really good arm talent,” Klieman said. “He sees the field really well and he can throw it from the hash to the sideline. He throws the vertical ball exceptionally well. And then he has athleticism and the ability to make plays with his feet.”
“I think many of us saw the clip in the US Army All-America game where he makes three or four guys miss and out runs everybody. That’s pretty special. You don’t see that all the time. That’s God given, the ability to just roll and run like he does. You combine that athleticism with the fact that he’s got tremendous arm talent and we’re excited about his future.”
Another Beebe is joining the offensive line
Cooper Beebe has established himself as one of the best offensive linemen in the Big 12 and the country since he became a starter at left tackle and then left guard for the Wildcats.
For that reason, it made sense that K-State would want to recruit his little brother out of Piper High School in Kansas City, Kan. But that connection had little to do with why the Wildcats liked the 6-foot-2 and 320-pound blocker.
“We’re so happy to keep the Beebe clan going and getting another one on campus,” Klieman said. “But we talked about Camden writing his own ticket. He is going to walk his own path and have his own stroy. This is not Cooper Beeb’s little brother. I’m excited to see where he goes, because he’s had a really good career at the high school level and I know he’s going to come in here and work extremely hard.”
Winning a Big 12 championship helped recruiting
You can probably file this away as obvious, but Klieman made sure to point out how much winning the Big 12 this season helped the Wildcats in recruiting.
He thinks it is one of the main reasons why they won recruiting battles for three important prospects (Asa Newsom, Terry Kirksey and Tre Spivey) late in the process.
“Look at what we did this year with some of the wins that we had on the road,” Klieman said, “and then to cap it off two weeks before signing day with the Big 12 championship. There was some validation there with some guys who were maybe unsure if this was the place they were going to go. Now they’re thinking this is the right spot, they’re going to the Big 12 champs. There is some sustainability there ... It’s an upward trend that we are excited about.”
This story was originally published December 21, 2022 at 8:18 PM with the headline "What Chris Klieman is saying about K-State’s best football recruiting class in ages."