Kansas State’s football turnaround started with this change from Chris Klieman
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Klieman reset the program midseason, returning practices to fall-camp fundamentals.
- Team response: Players embraced extra camp week and improved execution and energy.
- K-State has won three of four since reset, regained bowl hopes and Big 12 relevance.
Chris Klieman didn’t know what to do when Kansas State fell to 1-3 in early September.
The seventh-year head coach knew some drastic changes needed to be made after the Wildcats began the year with frustrating losses to Iowa State, Army and Arizona. But what were those going to be? And how was he going to make them quickly enough for K-State to turn its football season around?
After pondering those questions, and many others, he decided there was only one place to find answers — at the beginning.
“We weren’t a very good football team,” Klieman says now. “We weren’t coaching very well, and it started with me. We weren’t playing very well, either. We had to go back to square one.”
Turns out, there was no hyperbole in that statement. When K-State practiced for the first time after suffering a 23-17 loss at Arizona, Klieman treated that day as if the calendar had been turned back to August and the team was still in preseason training camp.
UCF was next up on the schedule, but K-State had two weeks to prepare for the Knights. So they spent the first week getting back to fundamentals.
“We didn’t work a snap on UCF,” Klieman said. “Not a walkthrough, not anything up in the office, nothing. We just went back to what we do in fall camp, which is K-State against K-State. We did good on good, our best against our best in all different situations. Then we went and evaluated as if we were just in the middle of August. We needed to go back to what we missed in fall camp.”
Klieman sold it as an extra week of training camp to K-State players, which they were willing to accept because the Wildcats didn’t experience a traditional preseason as they prepared for a special Week 0 clash with Iowa State in Dublin.
The Wildcats were also eager to shake things up after a listless start to the season.
“After the Arizona loss, we came in here for our bye week, and we got everything right,” K-State defensive back Zashon Rich said. “Coaches fixed a lot of things and got our energy up. Everybody just came together. Nobody pulled away. Then we elevated.”
Indeed, the Wildcats have looked like a different team since they hit the reset button last month.
“Those losses early on took us down to a very low place,” K-State running back Joe Jackson said. “We had to find our groove as a team, with everybody buying in. Once we found that groove and realized that we’re all in this with each other, that really helped us out a lot.”
K-State has gone from 1-3 to 4-4 by winning three of its past four games. All three of its recent victories have come by double digits. The lone loss came by a single point at Baylor.
Klieman described K-State as an “ascending team” after it thumped TCU 41-28 two weeks ago. No one will argue with him about that today. An emphatic 42-17 rivalry win over Kansas on Saturday served as an exclamation mark on K-State’s improvement.
Bowl eligibility is back within reach. So is a high finish in the Big 12 standings. The vibe has changed within the locker room.
“We’re playing with as much confidence as any anybody in the nation right now,” Rich said. “We feel like we could beat anybody.”
That theory will be put to the test at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday when K-State hosts No. 13 Texas Tech at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
The Red Raiders have been favored to win the Big 12 all season, and they have already embarrassed No. 22 Houston and No. 24 Utah by beating up on them in difficult road environments.
At this time last month, few would have given K-State much of a chance in this game.
But things are looking up again for the Wildcats now that they have finished an extra week of training camp.
“We’re not going to stop fighting,” K-State quarterback Avery Johnson said. “I think (our turnaround) just shows the amount of grit this team has. Obviously the season didn’t start how we wanted ... but we’re taking it one week at a time. Next up is Texas Tech, and it’s going to be a tough one. But if we come out and play the way we did (against KU), we have a really good chance.”
This story was originally published October 29, 2025 at 12:53 PM with the headline "Kansas State’s football turnaround started with this change from Chris Klieman."