Kansas State Q&A: Stanford’s QB, Christian McCaffrey, Jesse Ertz, Wesley Iwundu

Kansas State football fans tend to travel well when the Wildcats are on the road, and their season-opener at Stanford will be no exception.

K-State athletic director John Currie told me Thursday afternoon that the school sold its entire visiting allotment of 4,000 tickets for the game. But he is expecting a larger purple contingent in the stands, perhaps higher than 6,000 fans.

“We hear from other Kansas State fans that purchased their tickets directly from Stanford and from other outlets,” Currie said. “I think 6,000 fans is a pretty reasonable expectation for the game, which is pretty darn good.”

Stanford Stadium holds about 50,000 fans. If 6,000 K-State fans make it to California for the game, more than a tenth of the stadium will be there chanting K-S-U Wildcats.

Not a bad way to start the season on the road.

Now, let’s get to your questions. Thanks, as always, for asking them.

(Editor’s note: I apologize if I didn’t choose your question for K-State Q&A. Questions keep going up each week, but our software only allows us to embed a limited number of them from Twitter.)

It was a bit surprising to see Stanford go with Ryan Burns. Most expected Keller Chryst, the backup quarterback a year ago, to win the job. Stanford coach David Shaw said Burns, the third-stringer last year, won the job by a small margin. So small, it turns out, that both quarterbacks will play against Kansas State.

Sadly, I can’t offer an extensive breakdown of Burns and his QB skills. He has only attempted one pass for Stanford, a 13-yard completion in 2014. Much like Jesse Ertz, he enters the season mostly as an unknown. But I can tell you this: Burns has serious potential. A former touted recruit out of Virginia, he has a strong arm and should serve as a capable runner when he’s not handing the ball to star running back Christian McCaffrey.

It will be interesting to see how he handles his first start. He will be under pressure to play well, with Chryst trying to pass him on the depth chart. Will that motivate him to play well? Will he come out flat? Will Stanford ask McCaffrey to do most of the heavy lifting? Impossible to say with a new quarterback.

My initial reaction was over, but after looking over Christian McCaffrey’s past statistics I’m taking the under. Or predicting a push.

McCaffrey has only scored more than two touchdowns once in his college career: a four TD outburst against UCLA last season. The Heisman contender regularly tops 200 yards of total offense, but he’s not a end-zone seeking missile. He only scored 13 touchdowns a year ago.

Tough call.

Stanford is favored by 16, and that’s the type of spread that can be greatly impacted by late, meaningless scores. I don’t own a farm, but this is not the type of thing I would bet it on if I did.

I definitely think K-State plays Stanford tough, and fans on both sides will consider it a competitive game. But not all competitive games are created equal. Some are decided on the final play. Others can be close for three quarters, then one team pulls away late for a 20-point victory. What will this game be?

I’m thinking Christian McCaffrey and the home crowd will be enough to give Stanford a 10-14 point victory. So, I guess, I’m picking K-State to cover. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Stanford wins by 21. On the other hand, I can also see K-State winning this game. The Wildcats will need to play well and probably get a cheap score or two, but that’s not impossible.

There are lots of unknowns heading into the season-opener. Good thing I don’t have to make an official prediction for the game until next week when it gets printed in the paper.

As Bill Snyder would say, ask me again after the season.

That’s when I could make an accurate comparison. It is tough to compare him to anyone right now, given his limited playing experience. But I have posed this same question to many of his teammates and coaches, so I will pass along what they have said.

The most common comparisons I hear to Jesse Ertz are Collin Klein and Jonathan Beasley. Offensive coordinator Dana Dimel went so far as to call him “a mixture of both players.”

Ertz and Klein have similar bodies and are viewed as terrific leaders. Teammates have the utmost confidence in Ertz as a captain and expect big things out of him this season, even though he hasn’t attempted a pass in a K-State uniform. Ertz is an underrated runner, so he has dual-threat capabilities. Many have told me his playing style is similar to Beasley.

I could answer this question by pointing out Texas had never seen Collin Klein play before that game, while Stanford has loads of video on Joe Hubener (and none on Ertz). I could answer this question by saying Carson Coffman was battling an injury that week in 2010 and started the following week when he was healthy. Or I could answer this question by saying it seems unlikely Stanford will let Hubener and Charles Jones combine for 233 rushing yards and four touchdowns the way Texas collapsed against Klein and Daniel Thomas.

Or I could just insert a clip from Dumb and Dumber. Take it away Lloyd Christmas!

Here’s guessing receiver Corey Sutton plays this season. He might see time in spread formations along with Byron Pringle, Dominique Heath, Isaiah Zuber and Deante Burton. And he strikes me as a capable player on special teams. He’s got a good body and looked good in the spring. The coaches might decide Zach Reuter and Steven West provide enough receiver depth, and ask Sutton to redshirt. But keeping him active in case of injury would be a good idea.

Carlos Strickland is a former top 150 recruit, the type of high school prospect the Wildcats rarely land on the recruiting trail. Though the receiver didn’t play at Cal, his transfer will be a welcome addition to K-State in 2017. Strickland and Pringle could be fun to watch in the same offense.

That’s like asking who would win in a fight between Drederick Tatum and Homer Simpson. Sure, Homer has a thick enough skull to take lots of punches, but Tatum is the undisputed champ. The fight is over within seconds, with Moe Szyslak swooping in on a flying fan machine to save Homer from certain doom.

Though Dimel has raised some eyebrows with recent quotes, he’s not in the same league as Charlie Weis.

Check out the latest profile on Weis, which is excellent, and see for yourself. The man admits to toasting his buyout checks from Notre Dame with a Coors Light.

Over. Bruce Weber should have a 20-win team this season, especially if freshmen Xavier Sneed and Brian Patrick can build off their recent contributions in Europe. The Wildcats won 17 games last year against the strongest Big 12 in recent memory. The league schedule will be more forgiving next season.

On the animal front, I would give a slight edge to a trained eagle on the football field over an elephant, lion and alligator. The other animals would be ferocious and almost impossible to tackle, but the eagle could fly over everyone with the ball and score on command.

It’s fair to wonder why Wesley Iwundu didn’t do more in Europe. He’s the senior leader and he’s supposed to be the best player on the team next season. So it’s not the best of signs that he couldn’t score 10 points in any of K-State’s five games.

I certainly wouldn’t panic, though. They were just exhibitions, and the season is still a long way away. His routine was different over there, too. The Wildcats rarely practiced between games, and arrived for games with only enough time for stretching and layup lines. At one point, Bruce Weber said Iwundu asked him if the team could have extra warm-up time so he could get shots up.

He is still adjusting his shot. He hasn’t perfected it. There is time for that to change.

My main question for Weber earlier this week was about Iwundu’s struggles. Here was his answer:

“He didn’t get in a rhythm. I know the first game Wes didn’t make the shots. After that, he hesitated shooting them. That is why we are on this trip. I want you to shoot the pull-up jumper. I want you to shoot the open three. Again, it’s a fine line as a coach. I want to win the games, but the whole reason we are there is to learn and improve.”

“He had a couple pretty good stretches where he was the best player on the court. If he wants to have the year he wants to and we expect him to, he has to do that all the time. He has to dominate. I don’t know if it is going to be scoring so much, he just has to do everything, be a stat-stuffer ... That’s where he could be one of the best players in the league.”

Pretty awesome.

It’s good to see K-State fans embrace soccer, but not at all surprising. Like sophomore defender Hali Suttor said in May, the team already has super fans. Mike Dibbini’s squad won’t play many home games in its inaugural season, but they should all be well attended. It will be fun to watch this team grow from the ground up.

Disagree.

Nothing creates differing opinions like sports (and politics). Go on Twitter when other teams unveil new uniforms, and you will find people who hate everything about them and people lining up to buy replicas they can wear at home. In college, I had a sports journalism professor who had this theory that no one could agree on the best/worsts sports movies of all time for this very reason. So he polled the class and asked for nominations of the best and worst sports movies. Every movie that made its way onto the dry-erase board received votes for both best and worst of all time. I recall Rudy being very divisive.

K-State fans may disagree on certain topics, but I feel like that’s common. Go to Texas or Washington or Florida and things aren’t much different.

Option 2 is the most desirable Big 12 expansion outcome. The current setup, plus two teams from the West, would strengthen the league and allow it to form geographical divisions. But eight years is a long time to postpone expansion, considering the current drumbeat for it.

I would go with Option 1 next. Add Houston and BYU or Cincinnati, and the Big 12 would likely improve as a conference. It could return to two divisions and have a natural path to the conference championship game. If all goes well, the Big 12 could then be in position to poach Pac-12 teams.

Option 3 is intriguing. A Big 12/Pac-12 merger would likely guarantee the football champion a spot in the playoff every year, but it would make it very hard for two teams to get in. The loser of the championship game would never get an invite. And how would you determine the champion of each conference if they merged? Would they both play championship games and then a 14th game between the winners? Seems too complicated.

I think such a plan would ignite the sports trial of the century, as the Big 12 tried to make its television partners pay billions in pro-rata fees for teams they have absolutely no desire to televise.

If the Big 12 (or 24, as you suggest) won, I’m not sure a playoff between four division-winners would be the way to go. I’d say split the league in two and use a promotion/relegation soccer system, in which only the top 12 teams were considered a power conference. The best two teams in the lower division would get promoted into the top division each year, while the worst two teams in the top division get relegated.

This story was originally published August 26, 2016 at 2:28 PM with the headline "Kansas State Q&A: Stanford’s QB, Christian McCaffrey, Jesse Ertz, Wesley Iwundu ."