Good no longer good enough for Kansas State’s experienced offensive line
Dalton Risner has some very specific criteria for what constitutes a great game from Kansas State’s offensive line.
The senior right tackle says K-State has to rush for 200 yards and avoid conceding a single sack. Hit both benchmarks, and you’ve got a great game. Anything less, and you don’t.
By those standards, K-State’s offensive line — made up of Scott Frantz (left tackle), Tyler Mitchell (left guard), Adam Holtorf (center), Abdul Beecham (right guard) and Risner — only had two great games a year ago. The first came against Baylor, when the Wildcats rushed for 225 yards and protected Jesse Ertz from start to finish. The other happened against Oklahoma, when K-State rushed for 268 yards and kept Alex Delton clean the whole way.
That leaves 11 games that weren’t great. One might argue that 300-yard rushing efforts against Charlotte and UCLA more than made up for a few sacks in those games. But Risner is a stickler when it comes to his rating system.
“We had a good season. Nothing more, nothing less,” Risner said. “There were games last year where we rushed for (268) yards against Oklahoma, the No. 3 team in the country. Then we turn around and play Vanderbilt and put seven points on the board. I want to see consistency. That’s the sign of a dominating O-line. No matter who you play, you are getting 200 rushing yards, not giving up sacks, not giving up pressures.”
He wants more this season, considering what is expected of K-State’s offensive line with five starters returning.
“I want to see all great games,” Risner said. “No bad games, no good games. All great.”
It’s hard to fathom the Wildcats — or any team, really — living up to Risner’s standards over the course of a full season, but K-State’s offensive line has the personnel in place to be one of the best blocking units in the country this season.
Risner will lead the way. A fifth-year senior from Wiggins, Colo., he chose to return to K-State for his final year of college football instead of making an early run at the NFL. He is now an All-America candidate. But he’s hardly the only talented player in K-State’s front five.
Frantz has been an exceptional pass blocker, Holtorf has matured as a center and Mitchell and Beecham are above-average guards. Last year, they teamed up with Risner to pave the way for 198.8 rushing yards per game. That number ranked second in the Big 12. They also allowed two sacks per game, which ranked fifth in the conference.
More is expected this time around, and K-State’s offensive linemen are fine with that. They experienced a seamless transition from one season to the next.
“We have a lot of energy and excitement within our five, because we know that we have a chance to be something special,” Holtorf said. “But we also know that we haven’t played a game yet this year, so nothing has been accomplished. It pushes us to practice that much harder and pay that much more attention to detail, because we do have the opportunity to do something special up front. We are using that as motivation to get better every day.”
That’s what K-State coach Bill Snyder likes to hear. His biggest, and only, concern with this group has been complacency.
It’s a valid fear. The offensive line returned four starters last year and failed to dominate. But things seem different this season, now that Risner is pushing for greatness.
“Just because you have five starters back does not make you any better or any worse,” Snyder said. “It is what you do with it and how are they responding. I think they have been very business-like in their approach. They understand that they have experience. Having the ability through their experience to communicate well and have a great understanding of the overall picture allows us to process information so much more rapidly. To this point in time, they have not taking anything for granted.”