Kendall Adams expected to start, boost K-State defense against KU

The Kansas State football team is coming off its worst defensive game of the season, but the Wildcats have two reasons to expect better results when they line up against Kansas on Saturday.

1. Kendall Adams, a junior free safety with 40 tackles and two interceptions this year, is expected to return to his starting role after missing the Oklahoma game with an undisclosed injury.

2. The Jayhawks have totaled 127 yards and no points in their past two games, a far cry from the 619 yards and 42 points the Sooners piled up last week.

Oklahoma was a bad matchup for K-State’s short-handed defense. Kansas feels like the opposite.

That should come as a breath of fresh air for the Wildcats, because things got ugly against the Sooners.

“Number one: We have to get some pressure on the quarterback and we gave (Baker Mayfield) way too much time to throw the ball,” K-State coach Bill Snyder said when analyzing a 42-35 loss to Oklahoma. “Secondly, we have to cover. Everybody has somebody that they’re responsible for, an area they’re responsible for, and you have to be able to handle that, and we didn’t do that. It’s pretty simple. We just didn’t get pressure on the quarterback and didn’t cover people.”

K-State’s defensive miscues allowed Mayfield to throw for 410 yards and two touchdowns against mostly ineffective man coverage and run for another 69 yards and two touchdowns.

With Adams back in command of the secondary, this is the unit’s opportunity to show last week was an outlier in an otherwise solid season. K-State allowed an average of 362.5 yards and 21 points in its first six games and will look to improve on those numbers on Saturday.

The level of difficulty should drop against the Jayhawks, but the Wildcats aren’t taking anything for granted against their in-state rivals.

Kansas is coming off a pair of shutout losses to Iowa State and TCU, but, as Snyder pointed out earlier this week, K-State didn’t score a touchdown against the Horned Frogs, either.

The Wildcats know they need to play better defense in this game.

“KU playing us is going to be a different team than necessarily them playing TCU or any other team,” K-State defensive back Denzel Goolsby said. “It’s a rivalry game. They are going to have more energy and more fire trying to play Kansas State, as opposed to other teams.”

This story was originally published October 27, 2017 at 2:01 PM with the headline "Kendall Adams expected to start, boost K-State defense against KU."