K-State Q&A: Future draft goals for Chris Klieman, a hypothetical ’98 playoff and more
One of the most popular questions for this weekly mailbag over the past two years has revolved around the NFL Draft.
Last year, it was ... which K-State football player will keep the Wildcats’ draft streak alive in 2020? This year, it has been ... which K-State football player will start a new draft streak for the Wildcats in 2021?
They are perfectly reasonable questions. K-State famously (around these parts, at least) produced a NFL Draft pick for 26 consecutive years from 1994 to 2019. No Big 12 team, not even Oklahoma or Texas, had a longer active streak during that time. The streak began with Thomas Randolph and ended with Duke Shelley. It was a point of pride in Wildcat land. Fans wanted it to last forever. Now that it’s over, they want another one.
I totally get that. A new streak would be great for K-State football. I agree.
But I’m using the space at the top of this week’s Q&A to say I’m tired of writing about that draft streak or any other draft streak that might come along. Impressive as it was, the streak didn’t mean all that much during its final years.
Producing one draft pick each year seems like a low bar to clear for most power-conference teams. It’s like getting a C+ on a math test. Not bad. Not really worth bragging about either. There were certain years when K-State got an A++ with its draft classes. Between 1999 and 2003, during Bill Snyder’s most dominant stretch in Manhattan, the Wildcats had 27 draft picks for an average of nearly six per year. Now that was worth bragging about.
But by the end of Snyder’s second stint with the Wildcats, they rarely produced multiple draft picks in any given year. Between 2010 and 2019, K-State had six years of one lonely draft pick, and they had to count Bryce Brown (a seventh-rounder who played in just two games with the Wildcats) to keep the streak alive as long as they did. Their best year featured three picks in 2013.
Again, that’s not exactly bad. Even with a bunch of lean years mixed in, K-State ranked fourth in the Big 12 with 59 draft picks during its 26-year streak. The only teams that did better were Oklahoma (113), Texas (84) and West Virginia (64). The Wildcats were way ahead of Iowa State (20) and Kansas (28). They were a tad ahead of Texas Tech (39), Oklahoma State (41) and Baylor (45).
But in recent years there is no denying K-State’s draft rate has been dwarfed by many of those teams.
TCU, for example, has churned out 17 picks over the past five drafts. Baylor has produced 12. You could fill a fantasy team exclusively with recent Oklahoma draft picks.
Meanwhile, K-State has only had six picks in the past five drafts. Those results were no longer worth celebrating.
The point I am trying to make here is that starting a new streak that features one or two picks each year shouldn’t be the goal for Chris Klieman. It should be to recruit and develop talented players at a much higher clip so that the Wildcats can start sending players to the next level in bunches like other Big 12 teams have been doing for the past decade.
Developing a first-round pick, something K-State hasn’t done since Josh Freeman in 2009, also seems like a better goal.
Now, let’s dive into your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
I’m expecting former K-State defensive end Wyatt Hubert and former K-State tight end Briley Moore to both hear their names called in the late rounds on Saturday.
Hubert told me earlier this week that he is holding out hope for a Friday selection, as he projects himself as a third or fourth round pick. But I’m skeptical that will happen.
He seems more like a fifth-round-or-later pick to me. For his sake, I hope I’m wrong. But few of the mock drafts out there see Hubert as a Day 2 selection. There’s a chance he doesn’t get picked at all. Personally, I think he is too good for that to happen. But I thought the same about Alex Barnes a few years ago after he led the Big 12 in rushing, and he went undrafted. So you never know.
I wasn’t sure what to think about Moore’s chances at first, but he said that all but two NFL teams have shown interest in him throughout the draft process. He only needs one team to like him, and if 30 teams have him on their radar that is a very good sign.
In my experience, players with that much interest tend to get picked because teams know it won’t be easy to snag them as free agents after the draft.
Moore transformed his body more than anyone I can ever remember from any other K-State group while preparing for the draft. I hardly even recognized his new lean look at K-State’s pro day. His hard work and new diet should help him this weekend.
Here’s betting he also gets picked in the later rounds on Saturday. The sixth round could be a possibility. Or maybe the seventh. He admits he’s no lock to get picked. So anything is possible there, too.
After those two draft hopefuls, there should be a healthy number of former K-State players that land with NFL teams as undrafted free agents. Keep an eye on A.J. Parker, Elijah Sullivan, Justin Hughes, Drew Wiley and Blake Lynch.
The answer is obviously Whataburger.
I don’t know why so many people make a big deal about Patrick Mahomes liking the iconic Texas fast food chain. If Whataburger really wanted to make an impact in Kansas City and its surrounding cities it would add me to the sponsorship team, especially if I was about to get drafted by a NFL team. I’m not afraid to wear an orange suit.
If they’re not interested I would be happy to spread the good word for Otter. My job changed for the better when I began using that transcription app a few months ago.
But I’m really not picky. I would happily serve as a sponsor for just about any product or business if the money was right ... other than Subway. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror after encouraging someone to eat their sandwiches.
I’m an eight-team playoff kind of guy.
There are certainly merits to expanding all the way out to 12 or 16, but that seems a bit extreme given how top-heavy college football has been in recent years.
It’s much harder for an underdog to pull off a monumental upset in football than it is in basketball. The odds of a 16 seed beating Alabama or Clemson seem so small that I would rather cap the field at eight.
With eight teams involved, all five major conference champions can automatically qualify for the event. That is an absolute must. Otherwise, it’s an invitational. And only a select group of teams keep getting selected!
Including every power conference, plus the best team from the five other conferences would make it a much more exciting and inclusive playoff. Eliminating any and all teams from playoff consideration the instant they lose two games (or sometimes even one) like we do right now is silly.
Throw in two wild-card selections and you’re good to go.
If K-State is ever in the position to host a playoff game, I sure hope the Wildcats get to play Notre Dame. I mean, there’s no other way that game will ever get played at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
Had the playoff been around when Michael Bishop was a senior, K-State would have qualified for the four-team event despite losing to Texas A&M in the Big 12 championship game.
The top four teams in the final AP poll following the conclusion of the regular season were Tennessee, Florida State, Ohio State and K-State.
Poor UCLA got left out.
So the semifinal matchups would have been Tennessee vs. K-State and Florida State vs. Ohio State.
I would pay $50 to peer into an alternate universe and watch those games.
Sadly, without that pay-per-view technology I’m not really sure how to handicap those games. I was 15 years old living in Austin, Texas when all of that was happening, and watching college football wasn’t high on my to-do list back then.
I can tell you all about some of the classic James Bond battles I had with my friends on the Nintendo 64, though. Ask me a question about that next week and I would love to dive into those memories.
But I will still do my best to answer your question.
It’s probably safe to say the Wildcats would have been underdogs in a hypothetical playoff. Beating Tennessee (the real national champion that year) and then Florida State or Ohio State would have been a tall order.
Snyder didn’t have a great record in bowl games (9-10), and he was abysmal against top 10 teams (5-38).
K-State definitely had enough talent in 1998 to win back-to-back games on neutral fields against top four opponents, but those weren’t the type of games Snyder typically won. Then again, Snyder did whip Tennessee a few years later at the Cotton Bowl. So maybe the Cats stood a chance in that one.
My question is: Could the Wildcats have regained their early season form for a playoff? K-State decimated eight of the first nine opponents on its schedule by ridiculous scores ... 66-0, 73-7, 62-7. But it only beat Colorado (ranked 14th at the time) 16-9. And when the schedule got hard at the end its final four games were much closer. K-State beat Nebraska 40-30, Missouri 31-25 and then lost to Texas A&M 36-33 and Purdue 37-34.
My belief has always been that Snyder losing much of his staff to Bob Stoops at Oklahoma that year was a big reason for that and explains why K-State was unable to sustain its 11-0 start.
If you could add another hypothetical into this playoff in which all of those coaches were 100% focused on K-State for that entire season then I would give the Wildcats a much better shot in a hypothetical playoff. Maybe they could win it all.
Without that, though, it’s hard for me to imagine them winning two games against those teams.
This is a better question for a K-State undergrad than for me.
I watch every K-State home game from the press box, and I don’t usually pay much attention to the band. Sorry to The Pride of Wildcat Land on that one.
But I guess I do think it’s a good move.
Putting the band right behind the visiting sideline in the student section is a great way to fire up the most passionate fans in attendance and to distract the other team.
Mike Gundy complained the K-State band was making too much noise from behind the end zone last season. What will he say when he returns to Manhattan in 2022 and sees them in the first row at midfield?
Part of the reason K-State moved the band out of the student section in the first place was to create extra room for students. But those new seats were rarely filled. Might as well move the band back to its original home and sell their vacant space on the northeast side of the stadium to older fans.
By the way, early expectation is for that area to become a GA section that groups can utilize at Fort Riley Day, Band Day and the like next season
The Bat Cats have won seven of their last nine games to give themselves an outside shot at reaching the NCAA Tournament this season.
That’s the good news.
Alas, there is also some bad news. K-State is nowhere to be found on any of the current tournament projections. Yes, there are college baseball bracketologists. So Pete Hughes’ team still has plenty of work to do.
The way I see it, the Wildcats (24-16, 6-9 Big 12) need to win more than half of their remaining games and then have a good showing at the conference tournament to sneak into a Regional.
I think that is possible. They have upcoming series against Texas Southern, Baylor, Kansas and TCU. Beating Big 12 opponents will help more than beating Texas Southern. But they will take any wins they can get.
Let’s say K-State sweeps Texas Southern this weekend and then goes 5-4 over its final nine conference games. That might be enough to earn a spot in the postseason. At the very least, it should get the team on the bubble heading into the Big 12 Tournament.
Or the Bat Cats could win the Big 12 Tournament. Then nothing else that happens over the next 12 games will matter.
There’s really no good answer to this question.
We saw last year that teams are more than capable of scheduling football games on the fly and creating fun matchups at the last possible moment. I wish athletic directors would start scheduling more series one or two years ahead of time so we can get better matchups for everyone involved.
But the main reason football games are scheduled two decades in advance is there is much more competition for slots. Most teams only have three openings each year for nonconference football games. Once those get filled they have to look to the future. So that’s what teams are doing.
In basketball, most teams get to play 13 nonconference games. There’s rarely a need to schedule for the future with that many openings.
It’s also simply the way they have always done it in both sports. Old habits are hard to break.