K-State coach Chris Klieman regrets this decision from final minute of Texas loss
Kansas State football coach Chris Klieman faced an interesting dilemma in the final minute of a 27-24 loss against Texas on Saturday.
Given the benefit of hindsight, he wishes he would have handled it differently.
Here’s what happened: The Longhorns were penalized for lining up in an illegal formation when quarterback Sam Ehlinger crossed the goal line on a short run with the score tied at 24-24 and 39 seconds remaining. Klieman accepted the penalty to nullify the touchdown and push Texas back to the 8. Ehlinger took a knee on the next play and then Cameron Dicker won the game with a 26-yard field goal as time expired.
If Klieman had a do-over, he would have declined the penalty and allowed Texas’ touchdown to stand. The Longhorns would have led 31-24, but at least the Wildcats would have gotten a shot at forcing overtime with a last-gasp drive.
“We were telling the guys to try and strip it, and if they score, they score,” Klieman said. “When the penalty happened we were under the impression it was a dead ball. We didn’t really get the penalty or what it was. Hindsight being 20/20, we would have declined it and let them score.”
There was too much confusion on the sideline in the moment to properly consider that option.
“We had talked about that,” Klieman said. “When we tried to do it, they took a knee and such. A number of things played a little bit differently than what we thought. I really thought it was a dead-ball penalty, and that’s what I was told. They marked it, and it was so far away, and went on and played.”
In the grand scheme of things, accepting or declining that particular Texas penalty likely had no impact on the outcome.
The odds of Dicker missing a field goal were about the same as K-State driving the length of the field for a touchdown in the final seconds without any timeouts.
Skylar Thompson guided the offense to a hot start in Austin, and the Wildcats led 14-0 in the first quarter. But they struggled to move the ball the rest of the way and only gained 58 yards in the second half.
There were no good options for Klieman after Texas converted a key third-and-14 to enter field-goal range on its final possession.
Still, he thinks he could have made a better decision.
“We hadn’t really moved the football since the first quarter, so you kind of pick your poison of what you want to do,” Klieman said. “The ball was put into play. (The officials) never asked, to be honest with you. They don’t have to, to be honest with you. I have to be the one that says, ‘Wait a minute, was it a dead ball?’ We were trying to yell at them and find out, and we weren’t getting a whole lot of response.”