Why conservative play calling hurt Kansas State’s offense in loss to Arkansas State
In his debut season as offensive coordinator, Courtney Messingham didn’t call a single trick play for the Kansas State Wildcats.
He asked receivers to run the ball on reverses and end-arounds, he found creative ways to get the ball to playmakers in space, he used three running backs at the same time and he kept defenses off balance with substitution patterns that rivaled hockey line changes. But that’s as wild as things got for K-State’s offense last year. The Wildcats never attempted anything close to a double pass or a fumblerooski.
Messingham is so committed to his base package of plays that he doesn’t even use the term “trick plays” when talking about his most creative designs. He prefers to call them “special plays” or “gadget plays.” He says he prepares a handful of those before every game, and using them more regularly is a priority this season.
“We’ve got to do a better job of getting them called,” Messingham said earlier this month.
He even outlined when he would like to use them, describing anywhere between the 30-yard lines as the ideal spot.
“But then that always makes me nervous once we’re inside the 50-yard line and all of sudden you have one that doesn’t work and that puts you at second-and-10,” Messingham said. “I’ve got to do a better job of saying, ‘That’s OK. Second-and-10 is not a bad deal, taking the risk of having a big play that could create a touchdown for us.’ We talk about it all the time, but I’m the one, though, that has to pull the trigger on game day.”
Nothing seemed to change in the trick-play department during K-State’s opening loss to Arkansas State on Saturday. The Wildcats ran 69 plays in that game, and only one of them (an end-around run from Chabastin Taylor that gained 20 yards) could be considered a “gadget play.”
The other 68 were mostly conservative calls that led to K-State gaining 374 yards, well behind 489 from Arkansas State.
One of Messingham’s favorite play calls was an inside run for Harry Trotter, as the starting running back carried the ball 16 times for 43 yards and a touchdown. But K-State may have been better served with a different variety of plays, especially after starting center Noah Johnson was lost to injury in the first half.
Things improved when Deuce Vaughn (47 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries) entered the game and bounced outside for longer gains, but Messingham leaned on the inside run throughout the afternoon. With few holes opening up at the line of scrimmage, K-State’s running backs failed to gain five or more yards on 16 attempts.
At times, it seemed like the Wildcats were running between the tackles simply to eat up clock.
One example of this occurred early in the third quarter when Trotter was stuffed for a loss of one despite running behind a tight end and a fullback.
Running behind seven blockers didn’t help him in the second quarter, either, when Arkansas State also hit him for a loss by loading the box with defenders.
“We have to be better, bottom line,” head coach Chris Klieman said. “We were down a couple of starters on the offensive line. It doesn’t matter. The next guy has to be able to step up and perform. We have to sustain blocks better and not just on the offensive line, but on tight ends, fullbacks and receivers. I thought we lost the line of scrimmage and that’s something we pride ourselves on. We have to win the line of scrimmage and we weren’t able to do that on Saturday. There are no excuses. Arkansas State was better than we were up front.”
Inventive plays may have helped open some things up, especially on first down.
The Wildcats ran the ball 20 times on first down against the Red Wolves and gained just 32 yards on those plays, an average of 1.6 yards. To be fair, those numbers improve slightly without an errant snap that led to a 23-yard loss. An offensive coordinator that hates second and 10 found himself in that situation a whole lot.
That was a big reason why K-State only went 1 of 11 on third-down conversions.
But when the Wildcats threw the ball on first down, Skylar Thompson completed 7 of 12 passes for 115 yards and took one sack. K-State’s average gain on those plays was 8.8 yards.
K-State’s longest gain of the day on first down came on a 35-yard pass to Taylor. He had all kinds of room to run after Arkansas State’s front seven bit on a play-action fake to Trotter.
Staying with Trotter in the running game did help K-State hit a few big passes downfield. On a play early in the third quarter, it seemed like Arkansas State’s entire defense followed Trotter on a decoy run to the left, which allowed Thompson to roll out to his right and complete an easy pass to tight end Briley Moore.
K-State also had success with a swing pass to Vaughn with Trotter lining up as the primary running back next to Thompson out of the shotgun formation.
The Wildcats took advantage of many of those plays and found the end zone later on in those drives.
Creative plays weren’t always successful, as evidenced by a poorly schemed run out of a three-running back formation in the second quarter that left three K-State blockers trying to account for seven defenders, but they tended to work better than boring runs behind the right guard.